Tim Banks needs to go

[wmcovol]

Tennessee could have had the greatest college DC in the country and the defense was going to struggle. I give Banks credit for stringing enough defense together, with a very limited roster, to be competitive, and potentially win 10 games this year.

 

[sjt18]

No. It’s all coaching. Don’t start talking about depth on this board. Many think that there were 5 stars sitting on the bench this season.

They had depth on the DL and at safety. There are some talent holes to be sure. But that was true of the O as well and they just finished the season averaging 39 ppg.

The talent and depth were issues but you'll have a hard time convincing me that UT's problems in those areas were worse than USCe, MSU, or Arkansas. For that matter, UK didn't have a 3 deep D at every position.

There was no chance that any coach anywhere could have taken the talent UT had on D and finished top 4 in the SEC this year. But great coaching could have moved them from 12th to 8th.

I'm for giving them an off season to figure things out. But it isn't an either/or... there are some talent and development issues but there are some scheme and coaching issues too.

 

[JRich]

The scheme is good, the players are not, especially at LB and S. UT's front 4 is bad, only get pressure when they blitz. Basically stuck playing guys that would be third string on any top 15 program.

Looks like the ones that think Banks "has to go" are the minority.

 

[camp_steveo]

OP is wrong.

You can't lose 25 players because of the last coach then fire the new coach because of stats. This defense played their guts out. Get some more talent and let them play before you say fAr ThE cOaCh!

 

[Lurker]

Overused calls to "Far the Coach" by the UT faithful is a big contributor to where we have been for the last decade.

Calls to fire Banks and/or Martinez are pretty ridiculous given what they cobbled together using our remaining "talent" after the great exodus. Comparing Banks to Sunseri is without any basis in fact and, instead, is simply lazy kvetching.

This staff needs to stay together, unchanged, for a while to establish continuity and to sustain the culture Heupel has, so far, successfully introduced. Tennessee football is alive and improving and that's something I wondered if I would ever get to say again, given the past 10 years. GBO!

 

[Pump Guy]

Jeremy is the problem. Calling all those stupid plays!

 

[GoVols64]

I, for one, am going to let this develop over the next season to determine whether he is the right guy or not. There are a few things to consider:

1. DL - We played very well against the run for the most part. Our TFL was impressive but it came at the cost of an inferior pass rush. If I had to guess we had good players that were a step to slow to be elite. This created a quandary I will get to in a second.

2. LB - Banks actually got very aggressive but also made some mistakes. He was the only player at LB that really stood out to me all year which is a well documented shortcoming of our D. You just cannot play good defense without solid LBs; highest position of need IMO.

3. Secondary - AT was a stud and covered up a lot of gaps in the secondary as we saw vs. Purdue. We have some speed and talent but our inability to pressure QBs with our front four put a lot of pressure on this unit and they didn't hold up well.

Schematically we were okay (my opinion) but we needed better talent to match up well or more players in coverage instead of blitzers. Too often we gave up chunk plays either due to soft coverage or lack of pass rush. It all ties together and there were no obvious position groups we could say were strong much less elite. To put it into perspective though, even elite talent can get toasted if they are matched poorly (a la UGA vs. Bama). My point is we need to at least get to B level talent across the board to know if it is a coaching problem. Time will tell.

 

[ClearwaterVol]

Seriously defense has been awful all year worst 3rd Dow defense I’ve ever seen he’s a slightly better Sal Sunseri. Purdue didn’t even have their best receiver today

I am sorry, thought we were missing a cb who was decent.

 

[WilcoVolsFan]

Seriously defense has been awful all year worst 3rd Dow defense I’ve ever seen he’s a slightly better Sal Sunseri. Purdue didn’t even have their best receiver today

This you?

Hahahahahaha

We don’t even know if it’s Heupel yet so let’s not freak out

They probably all defended Dooley, Butch, and Pruitt too. I wish I could be blind and be happy about the hire. Keep blabbing about how great his offenses are but don’t want to mention how his teams regressed and his defense gave up almost 500 yards per game

The fans defending this hire are exactly why our athletic department keeps doing it. Our Athletic department keeps feeding us the same crap repeatedly and our fans keep buying it.

Heupel will not close the gap. I expect him to be a huge failure based off his trend at UCF and his recruiting abilities at UCF. Don’t even get me started on his defense giving up 500YPG. Of course you approve of the hire.

 

[VOLSAO]

Seriously defense has been awful all year worst 3rd Dow defense I’ve ever seen he’s a slightly better Sal Sunseri. Purdue didn’t even have their best receiver today

People are so impatient. Everybody, EVERYBODY, was worried about this defense heading in to the season. We do not have SEC caliber LBs and BY is the only real threat off the edge at this point. Hard to put out a good product in YEAR 1 when you can’t affect the QB. He did a fine job all things considered. Let’s see what he does in year 2.

 

[MiramarVol]

Id like to see Banks have time to recruit his own players. The portal devastated TN in 2021. This is going to be extremely difficult because Banks was late on the 2022 class at UT. This fan base is not going to give a coordinator 3 years to turn the ship around and shouldn’t. He’s got to show improvement on the field in 2022.

Show improvement with what? Someone elses players? He did that this year with a defense that was missing To'o To'o, Crouch, Bailey, Williams, Bennett, Easing, D.Johnson, French, Lawerence, Thompson and Buchanan, Emerson and Middleton. Even with 4 or 5 of those guys we would've been better. Give him a chance robget his guys in there and see what happens.

 

[WilcoVolsFan]

Defensive Coordinator Tim Banks Named Broyles Award Nominee - University of Tennessee Athletics

 

[Dooley Noted]

Seriously defense has been awful all year worst 3rd Dow defense I’ve ever seen he’s a slightly better Sal Sunseri. Purdue didn’t even have their best receiver today

Wrong. Dude somehow made a second string unit that had to play 40-50 minutes every game into one that could actually help us win more than we lost. DCs can’t cover WRs and/or tackle, etc.

 

[Delmar]

Pretty simple really. I’m going to let them get some more talent in there especially at LB and DB before I make a judgement. It is extremely silly to judge Banks on this year’s defense. Doesn’t matter what the scheme is when you have LB’s and DB’s that can’t cover me and I’m 65 with a hip replacement.

 

[AdoptedVOL]

Show improvement with what? Someone elses players? He did that this year with a defense that was missing To'o To'o, Crouch, Bailey, Williams, Bennett, Easing, D.Johnson, French, Lawerence, Thompson and Buchanan, Emerson and Middleton. Even with 4 or 5 of those guys we would've been better. Give him a chance robget his guys in there and see what happens.

I believe I noted 2021 was a mulligan - his first year and we all know the portal was not his friend. I’ll also give him much credit for TFL.

If I’m his manager, I need to know what he needs from me in order to ensure he has the personnel on board to show improvement in all phases of D for the 2022 season over 2021.

How is this unreasonable?

 

[LWSVOL]

Seriously defense has been awful all year worst 3rd Dow defense I’ve ever seen he’s a slightly better Sal Sunseri. Purdue didn’t even have their best receiver today

Well, you might get your wish. He is on Notre Dame's list for defensive coordinator.

 

[vettefool]

Depth has been lacking especially at linebacker.

Ability has been missing too.

 

[PlanetVolunteer]

Ability has been missing too.

Byron Young
Jeremy Banks
Theo Jackson
Alontae Taylor

They were the only guys that had ability on our D

 

[wmcovol]

Byron Young
Jeremy Banks
Theo Jackson
Alontae Taylor

They were the only guys that had ability on our D

Add Thomas, Butler and Baron to the list for talent. I do think all of these guys busted their ass every game. Tennessee showed up every game this yr IMO and a lot of teams can't say that. For that I respect every one of them.

 

[sjt18]

Article came out a few minutes ago saying he's a candidate for the DC job at ND. We will soon see how valuable he's considered at UT.

 

[Vol Main]

You've posted this more than once. I think I speak for 99% of us when I say shut the f*@k up.

Yeah, STFU!

 

[volaholic1969]

We had a defensive "guru" and won 3 games. Overachieved this year by many standards. Nothing like a coaching change to fix things.

 

[PlanetVolunteer]

Add Thomas, Butler and Baron to the list for talent. I do think all of these guys busted their ass every game. Tennessee showed up every game this yr IMO and a lot of teams can't say that. For that I respect every one of them.

Omari and Thomas could be good.

Butler and Blakely were solid.

Lots of guys in the front 7 played average to above average. Byron Young and Banks were really the only guys that were truly impressive.

Also people should rewatch the Pitt game to see how effective Mitchell was. He would have made us better for sure.

It really starts up front though, you can make our DB's jobs much easier if we can get to the QB.

Right now I like Hadden, Turnage and Charles. They could all be good. The rest will at least bring us back a lot of experience which is better than a bunch of true freshman running around back there. Which we can say about the entire defense. Just don't know how much better the guys we have can get. But we do know everyone that had played under Pruitt was better this year than they were prior.

May the transfer portal serve us well

 

[MaTaLa]

I vote OP needs to go!

 

[Doc_Vol]

This thread is dumb//