Reflections on Johnny, Phil and Jeremy before Georgia

#1
Eddie Vol Halen

Eddie Vol Halen

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#1
I love Johnny Majors as much as the next Vol fan. A Tennessee legend, a revered figure and rightly so.

There is no doubt though that when Phil took over when he did - the team became immediately better. Like the next game better and certainly the next season. And then we achieved things we hadn't achieved at Tennessee since the 60s and arguably since the end of WWII.

I want to believe last week was a complete aberration. I don't feel the team was unprepared; when the first interception happened the way it did, there seemed an inexorable momentum that it just wasn't going to be our day. It felt like the young men in orange had simply forgotten how to relax, hit the guy in front of them and just play football. The mistakes just piled on after that.

Clearly Phil took over a team a lot healthier than Jeremy Pruitt. I think Butch damaged the culture in untold ways. I really believe his legendary micromanaging killed all the fun for everybody. I don't know when we should "look better" under Pruitt. It may seriously take three years, the program has been damaged so badly by such epic mismanagement for a decade.

But I really hope it starts to look better tomorrow at Georgia.
 
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#6
#6
McDad said:
This is such a common phrase, Freak should make it into an emoticon. Or, we could abbreviate it like we do "WGWTFA".

FSAKIMB.
Click to expand...

And then we could have the counter-acronym for responses: TBS*. The first word is "that's".

FSAKIMB!

TBS!

Freak could probably save up to 2% of VN.com bandwidth with just those two acronyms. :)




* not to be confused with BS, which means "Butch sucks!" That's yet another acronym that could save a lot of bandwidth these days.
 
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#8
#8
I think improvement is slow. Everything depends on recruiting success. If CJP can keep his class together and improve in 2020, he will be on his way, regardless of the lack of wins this year.
 
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#9
#9
ZippyMorocco said:
You do realize that Fulmer stuck a knife in Majors' back.
Click to expand...

By taking over the controls when Majors needed a Quintuple Bypass and making the team look a lot better than it did under Majors. Johnny was not "changing with the game" and Phil brought new life and a winning attitude to the program and fans. Phil did not hire himself nor fire JM. The University hired Phil because of the success on the field and the new excitement from the fan base.
 
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#10
#10
basspond said:
By taking over the controls when Majors needed a Quintuple Bypass and making the team look a lot better than it did under Majors. Johnny was not "changing with the game" and Phil brought new life and a winning attitude to the program and fans. Phil did not hire himself nor fire JM. The University hired Phil because of the success on the field and the new excitement from the fan base.
Click to expand...

Fulmer was something like 11-5 against Georgia. That's a Georgia fan you're responding to (ole Zippy). Ipso facto presto digito cogito ergo sum, he's just trying to besmirch a great man because his team was a doormat for Phillip's teams most of the time. :)
 
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#13
#13
VFL-82-JP said:
Fulmer was something like 11-5 against Georgia. That's a Georgia fan you're responding to (ole Zippy). Ipso facto presto digito cogito ergo sum, he's just trying to besmirch a great man because his team was a doormat for Phillip's teams most of the time. :)
Click to expand...
I remember Donnan cursing Fulmer at midfield after a beat down in Neyland
 
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#14
#14
OP, I think in year 3 we will see some good improvement. Year 4 should be a major jump in improvement. This team is just that bad. There is absolutely no comparison from when Fulmer took over to what Pruitt walked into. I mean we had Will Overstreet watching the UF game saying we only have a few SEC caliber guys on either side of the ball. So what does that tell you? We have a long way to go.

I highly doubt you see any different play tomorrow against UGA. It might as well be a high school team playing the Rams. We will be flat, slow and outmatched badly tomorrow. Why? Because we simply dont have much real talent.
 
#16
#16
BigOrangeTrain said:
OP, I think in year 3 we will see some good improvement. Year 4 should be a major jump in improvement. This team is just that bad. There is absolutely no comparison from when Fulmer took over to what Pruitt walked into. I mean we had Will Overstreet watching the UF game saying we only have a few SEC caliber guys on either side of the ball. So what does that tell you? We have a long way to go.

I highly doubt you see any different play tomorrow against UGA. It might as well be a high school team playing the Rams. We will be flat, slow and outmatched badly tomorrow. Why? Because we simply dont have much real talent.
Click to expand...

I do believe we are in a worse position than the situation Saban walked into at Alabama. I think it's much more about the culture than the talent though. Botch destroyed fun and player development. The team is supposed to have talent. I think we're seeing some of that translate in the guys who were picked up in the NFL. For instance, Todd Kelly Jr is a footballer - he's just been Botched.
 
#19
#19
peddi631 said:
I disagree. I like Fulmer and his part was necessary for winning, but always remember without David Cutcliffe there never would have been a NC.
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DC would have left with Phil to be his OC if Fulmer hadn't gotten the UT job. I always suspected Phil, Cut and others would have wound up at Arkansas in 1993 if we'd stuck with Majors.

Not sure how many others would have followed, but knowing Johnny's tendency to cycle through assistants with frequency I think it would have been significant.

Johnny would have likely started 93 with a mostly new staff. What kinds of assistants could someone coming off a triple bypass attract? UT football as we know it would likely not exist.
 
#20
#20
VFL-82-JP said:
And then we could have the counter-acronym for responses: TBS*. The first word is "that's".

FSAKIMB!

TBS!

Freak could probably save up to 2% of VN.com bandwidth with just those two acronyms. :)




* not to be confused with BS, which means "Butch sucks!" That's yet another acronym that could save a lot of bandwidth these days.
Click to expand...

Yea, there's no way Phil did anything questionable during that mess. He probably didn't even want the job.

Funny how most people are one extreme to the other when it comes to that.
 
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#21
#21
Eddie Vol Halen said:
I love Johnny Majors as much as the next Vol fan. A Tennessee legend, a revered figure and rightly so.

There is no doubt though that when Phil took over when he did - the team became immediately better. Like the next game better and certainly the next season. And then we achieved things we hadn't achieved at Tennessee since the 60s and arguably since the end of WWII.

I want to believe last week was a complete aberration. I don't feel the team was unprepared; when the first interception happened the way it did, there seemed an inexorable momentum that it just wasn't going to be our day. It felt like the young men in orange had simply forgotten how to relax, hit the guy in front of them and just play football. The mistakes just piled on after that.

Clearly Phil took over a team a lot healthier than Jeremy Pruitt. I think Butch damaged the culture in untold ways. I really believe his legendary micromanaging killed all the fun for everybody. I don't know when we should "look better" under Pruitt. It may seriously take three years, the program has been damaged so badly by such epic mismanagement for a decade.

But I really hope it starts to look better tomorrow at Georgia.
Click to expand...

The one thing that jumped out at reading this was "sense the 60's". I think you really mean the late 60's. The early 60's are a dark cloud on my memory as I expect this "time" to be, that is if I am lucky enough to live long enough to have it as a memory not the present agony.
 
#22
#22
savannahfan said:
The one thing that jumped out at reading this was "sense the 60's". I think you really mean the late 60's. The early 60's are a dark cloud on my memory as I expect this "time" to be, that is if I am lucky enough to live long enough to have it as a memory not the present agony.
Click to expand...

You're absolutely correct. The Wyatt, McDonald, Dickey transition was not pretty. Hopefully CJP will also engineer a turnaround like coach Dickey was able to do.
 
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