Why Josh Deserves The Criticism

[VolTom1]

.
Thanks coach.

This might be nicest comment I've got so far. Thanks.

 

[zjcvols]

Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make. If we didn't luck up inot Joey we would be sitting at 1-5 maybe 2-4 in the SEC right now. I don't think Nico could have won that State game, maybe the Arkansas game since their D is soft as baby poop.

It's funny you say we lucked into Joey, Heupel was the one who made the decision to refuse Nico's demands and take Joey. So no, he didn't luck into Joey. He made a calculated risk and it's mostly worked.

 

[BernardKingGOAT]

Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make. If we didn't luck up inot Joey we would be sitting at 1-5 maybe 2-4 in the SEC right now. I don't think Nico could have won that State game, maybe the Arkansas game since their D is soft as baby poop.

You don't know any of that. We didn't necessarily luck up getting Joey. We certainly got unlucky with Nico's family running around the country with their hands out. Joey probably feels pretty lucky he's not playing for UCLA and got the opportunity here

 

[VolTom1]

BUT IF THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED DIDN'T HAPPEN, AND IF THE THINGS THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN HAPPENED, THEN WE WOULD'VE BEEN A BAD TEAM! FAHHHR HEUPEL.

It's perfectly logical to look at see what Josh was planning with Nico this year till he left. If that happens, and Nico stays, we are in a worse position than we are now with Joey. Our offense with Joey is putting up tons of points, but with Nico it was not, even if Nico is a little better than last year we almost lost to Arkansas and MissSate this year, there is no reason to think Nico would be anywhere near as good as Joey, Do you think Nico would be running the offensive as good as Joey?

 

[VolTom1]

It's funny you say we lucked into Joey, Heupel was the one who made the decision to refuse Nico's demands and take Joey. So no, he didn't luck into Joey. He made a calculated risk and it's mostly worked.

Yeah you're right man. Josh planned this whole thing with Joey, he knew he was going to ball out and learn the offense in a few months. Seriously man stop lying to yourself, you'll do better in life.

 

[Vols410]

It's perfectly logical to look at see what Josh was planning with Nico this year till he left. If that happens, and Nico stays, we are in a worse position than we are now with Joey. Our offense with Joey is putting up tons of points, but with Nico it was not, even if Nico is a little better than last year we almost lost to Arkansas and MissSate this year, there is no reason to think Nico would be anywhere near as good as Joey, Do you think Nico would be running the offensive as good as Joey?

Different question then...

How many college coaches would have taken in Joey mid-spring practice, while installing a revamped offense and brining in a new RB, new WR corps, and new OL, and turned it into a top 5 offense?

When you have a few in mind (because I imagine there's a bunch...) how many of them would you call "slow to adapt"?

 

[BernardKingGOAT]

It's perfectly logical to look at see what Josh was planning with Nico this year till he left. If that happens, and Nico stays, we are in a worse position than we are now with Joey. Our offense with Joey is putting up tons of points, but with Nico it was not, even if Nico is a little better than last year we almost lost to Arkansas and MissSate this year, there is no reason to think Nico would be anywhere near as good as Joey, Do you think Nico would be running the offensive as good as Joey?

Pure speculation. With Nico, we probably would have run the ball more which would have kept the defense off of the field. The downside to quick scoring drives is that the defense is out on the field more often. That's not a favorable scenario in the second half of games when your two best corners are out.

 

[zjcvols]

Yeah you're right man. Josh planned this whole thing with Joey, he knew he was going to ball out and learn the offense in a few months. Seriously man stop lying to yourself, you'll do better in life.

Josh was the one who refused Nico and his family's demands. He was the one who recruited Joey to help come in and run the offense in 2024. But yet, you refuse to give Josh credit for not kowtowing to Nico's family and making a tough but firm decision to put the program first. Then refusing to give him credit for finding a suitable replacement and being able to adjust and get Joey acclimated enough to have an elite offense.

Sounds like the coach might actually be adaptable.

 

[zjcvols]

Different question then...

How many college coaches would have taken in Joey mid-spring practice, while installing a revamped offense and brining in a new RB, new WR corps, and new OL, and turned it into a top 5 offense?

When you have a few in mind (because I imagine there's a bunch...) how many of them would you call "slow to adapt"?

Impossible, OP said that Josh Heupel is not adaptable.

 

[VolTom1]

You don't know any of that. We didn't necessarily luck up getting Joey. We certainly got unlucky with Nico's family running around the country with their hands out. Joey probably feels pretty lucky he's not playing for UCLA and got the opportunity here

I disagree with part of what you said. Do you think Josh knew Joey would be as good as he has been? Josh twice now has evaluated QB's wrong, he thought Joe Milton was better than Hendon Hooker, and he thought Nico was worth 8 million dollars. I just doubt him, I think he lucked up into not having a losing season this season due to Nico's greed. I hope Josh makes some personal changes and we can forget about all of these and go win a natty.

 

[BernardKingGOAT]

Yeah you're right man. Josh planned this whole thing with Joey, he knew he was going to ball out and learn the offense in a few months. Seriously man stop lying to yourself, you'll do better in life.

Seriously man, the advice on life is silly. Heupel did a hell of a job getting Joey ready to run this offense. Heupel knows what he is doing

 

[Vols410]

I disagree with part of what you said. Do you think Josh knew Joey would be as good as he has been? Josh twice now has evaluated QB's wrong, he thought Joe Milton was better than Hendon Hooker, and he thought Nico was worth 8 million dollars. I just doubt him, I think he lucked up into not having a losing season this season due to Nico's greed. I hope Josh makes some personal changes and we can forget about all of these and go win a natty.

Got it. So when Heupel gets an eval wrong it's because he's bad. When he gets an eval right, it's because he's lucky.

Do you read what you write?

 

[BernardKingGOAT]

I disagree with part of what you said. Do you think Josh knew Joey would be as good as he has been? Josh twice now has evaluated QB's wrong, he thought Joe Milton was better than Hendon Hooker, and he thought Nico was worth 8 million dollars. I just doubt him, I think he lucked up into not having a losing season this season due to Nico's greed. I hope Josh makes some personal changes and we can forget about all of these and go win a natty.

I know he got him ready to run his offense. That's not luck. You can't doubt Heupel all you want but the fact is that he forgot more about it than you know about it. That applies to evaluating QBs too.

Oh, BTW, it's personnel not personal

 

[zjcvols]

I disagree with part of what you said. Do you think Josh knew Joey would be as good as he has been? Josh twice now has evaluated QB's wrong, he thought Joe Milton was better than Hendon Hooker, and he thought Nico was worth 8 million dollars. I just doubt him, I think he lucked up into not having a losing season this season due to Nico's greed. I hope Josh makes some personal changes and we can forget about all of these and go win a natty.

Kirby Smart chose Jake Fromm over Justin Fields
Kirby Smart chose JT Daniels over Stetson Bennett
Dan Mullen chose Feliepe Franks over Kyle Trask
Nick Saban chose Cooper Bateman over Jake Coker

Coaches choose QB's wrong all the time.

 

[Flipdaddy]

This post is to point out why those who are saying Josh deserves no criticism are wrong, and why I personally don't think Josh will achieve anything beyond the occasional play off appearance here at Tennessee. That being said this is not a call to fire Josh, that would be stupid with all of the coaching changes going on right now. Also if you are fine with mediocrity, if you are fine being average and not great, Josh is the prefect guy for you, just move along from this post, call me stupid for my concern, all of the typical BS I get instead of listening to the legitimate complaints.

1. Clock management - He has no idea what the rules are. Josh literally didn't know the clock was not stopping late into the Oklahoma game, not the first game he has mismanaged the clock. In this past game he had to have the ref explain the rules to him right at the two minute mark. This is a huge red flag, how are the players suppose to know the rules if the coaches don't know them, how can a staff this big not know the rules over half way through the season?

2. Stubbornness - He adapts slowly, refuses to play the best players if they are younger, most of the time. He also gives players and coaches more chances than they deserve. He didn't change up the offense for two years, we had two years of stagnation and he refused to change until this year. He has yet to force the D to change, we continue to play the same regardless if we are getting sacks or not, DB's continue not to turn and locate the ball even when they could etc...

3. Talent Evaluation/Development - While we have some good talent evaluators at Tennessee, Josh himself has been really bad at evaluating QB talent, at least since he has been at Tennessee. Also WR was an issue till this year it seemed, why did it take so long to fix these things? Hopefully they figured that blind spot out, remember though, If it was not for Joe Milton getting hurt Hendon Hooker would have sat on the bench, if it was not for the COVID year players we would have been in a world of hurt last year and this year to a degree.

4. Preparedness - Multiple games every year we go into not prepared, making critical mistakes and losing or almost losing to inferior teams. We win many of these games just because we have better overall talent, but those games should never be that close. TBF Other teams do this from time to time, Georgia comes to mind, But Georgia has one or two of these games a year, that they normally win, we on the other hand have about 4 and we are lucky if we win half of them.

5. Blindness - This is the biggest issue I see with Josh. Anyone who pays attention could clearly see we need more people on the DL, proven talent and depth. Anyone could see we were about to lose TONS of production from 2024, the type of production that you can't just get back without using the transfer portal. Think about it, it's very scary to think that if Nico stayed, just how bad would we be. Josh is very LUCKY, becasue for all the mistakes Joey makes, he also makes some really good plays, that I doubt Nico would make, and they fully expected Nico to be our QB this year. How can we lose so much of our production and think we are going to be ok with Nico at QB. This is what we lost from 2024, Omari Thomas, Omarr Norman-Lott, Elijah Simmons, James Pearce Jr, Jayson Jenkins, Jakobe Thomas, and Will Brooks. I can recall many plays from each one of these guys that helped us win games, critical plays that we might not win the game if they don't make them. I can't be the only one who seen this coming, our D taking huge steps back, this concerns me because as I said above, if Nico stays we are probably lose the Arkansas and Mississippi state games. We would be 1-5 in the SEC.. and Josh would probably be fired.

All of this being said I don't want Josh to be fired, I want him to make changes, but I'm losing confidence that he will do it, or do it fast enough to save his job, and our program from being bad again. If you get mad at me over that, I don't care, I've been a VFL and will always be, I just don't want a repeat of the bad years. I want Tennessee to be how I was when I was a kid, dominant, feared, winning championships, and we will never get there if Josh settles with the state of things now and makes no changes. I have hope he will, hopefully this past game will be the catalyst for change.

Lack of clock management comes from him calling plays. It’s hard to focus on overall live game strategy when his mind is on what can get us to the next possession.

 

[superdave1984]

My biggest gripe with Heupel is he historically has teams with really good or great offenses and bad defenses. There have been a couple of outlier years mixed in. This was something I was not thrilled about when we hired him. He has built the Vols up out of a pathetic situation that nobody really wanted to take on. His weakness is not making personnel changes when they need to be made. I think we have the athletes, we just are not getting the most out of them on defense. Tackling is bad and there are often guys out of position. It isn't that Heupel doesn't know this and you can tell from his press conferences he is frustrated with it. HOWEVER, it is on him to get it fixed one way or another. He simply has to cut bait with some people on the coaching staff and find better replacements. Heck, Orgeron would be an upgrade for D coordonator. osu went off script when they hired Matt Patricia and they have just curb stomped everyone with their defense. Heupel needs to do the same.

 

[farmdogvol]

No one will argue the clock management, we all see it. 10-3, 9-4, 11-2, if that is your definition of mediocrity then you are clueless. We have seen CJH change the offensive scheme the last 3 years to adapt to what he had at QB. Every evaluator in the country said Nico was a can't miss generational talent. You can't blame him for missing it on Nico, everybody else did also. Even after last year there were plenty of people talking about his elite arm talent. CJH looks for culture fit in the portal not just a body to put on the field. They looked at other DTs in the portal, but they aren't going to pay 2nd and 3rd stringers starting $. Most players enter the portal for money now, UT is not going to overspend on the portal. Jenkins and Thomas both probably left for money. Jenkins wasn't going to get starting money when he would be behind Josephs on the depth chart. They are loaded at end and aren't missing him. I would like to have Thomas on this team. The team has played more younger players this year than ever before. Look at the development of Spillman, Redmond, and Farooq. Redmond had an excellent game against OU. He played pass coverage great and had a critical open field tackle on Mateer. Farooq had his best game yet. Before the season everybody was panicing about the WRs. Now UT has the best WR trio in the SEC and have a ton of talent coming in the next class. Perry and Sanders are also developing nicely. We all know Sanders blew it on the sack, but he has great technique and footwork for a true Freshman. He messed up on 1 play against thet best D-line in the SEC. The edge rusher was lined up off the line and delayed his rush until Sanders started to engage the DT, by the time he saw him coming he was too late to block him. A Freshman mistake against 1 of the best in the SEC. Yes CJH deserves criticism, most agree with that, but those saying firing him right now are delusional.

 

[Vols91]

Let’s bring back cornbread and see what happens

 

[Cobb-Webb 1989]

Anyways... Hype is not going to be fired.

He needs to prove and trust, that he can teach (coach) young (recuited) talented qbs to... be great qbs

Get the best qb coach in the country on staff.

 

[utvols74]

The desire to win is a tremendous virtue to have. Unfortunately, with unprecedented succe$$, the desire to win can wain. When you pay a person $9M a year to do something, the vast majority of humanity will take losing (or plain work for the rest of us - Lottery winners anyone?) less seriously than before when they were on the way up the ladder. There are exceptions - Saban, Smart, Jimmy Johnson, others. Then there are coaches that react the way most of us would react - Franklin at Penn State; Pruitt, Jones, and Dools at UT; among others.

What is the separating factor?

IMHO, it is the burning desire to win a championship. Be the best. Not just giving it "happy talk" to boosters, alumni, fans, media, players, etc. With all the money in your pocket, you can't buy a SEC or Natty. Not saying CJH doesn't want to win a championship, but if it isn't a fire in his belly to do so, we'll all soon know. Body language and in-game reactions will telegraph the truest desire to win it all.

 

[zjcvols]

The desire to win is a tremendous virtue to have. Unfortunately, with unprecedented succe$$, the desire to win can wain. When you pay a person $9M a year to do something, the vast majority of humanity will take losing (or plain work for the rest of us - Lottery winners anyone?) less seriously than before when they were on the way up the ladder. There are exceptions - Saban, Smart, Jimmy Johnson, others. Then there are coaches that react the way most of us would react - Franklin at Penn State; Pruitt, Jones, and Dools at UT; among others.

What is the separating factor?

IMHO, it is the burning desire to win a championship. Be the best. Not just giving it "happy talk" to boosters, alumni, fans, media, players, etc. With all the money in your pocket, you can't buy a SEC or Natty. Not saying CJH doesn't want to win a championship, but if it isn't a fire in his belly to do so, we'll all soon know. Body language and in-game reactions will telegraph the truest desire to win it all.

Poster thinks head coach that won a national title as the starting QB and was a Heisman finalist after starting his career in JUCO and tearing his ACL might not have burning desire to win.

Sure, Jan.

 

[lukeneyland]

This post is to point out why those who are saying Josh deserves no criticism are wrong, and why I personally don't think Josh will achieve anything beyond the occasional play off appearance here at Tennessee. That being said this is not a call to fire Josh, that would be stupid with all of the coaching changes going on right now. Also if you are fine with mediocrity, if you are fine being average and not great, Josh is the prefect guy for you, just move along from this post, call me stupid for my concern, all of the typical BS I get instead of listening to the legitimate complaints.

1. Clock management - He has no idea what the rules are. Josh literally didn't know the clock was not stopping late into the Oklahoma game, not the first game he has mismanaged the clock. In this past game he had to have the ref explain the rules to him right at the two minute mark. This is a huge red flag, how are the players suppose to know the rules if the coaches don't know them, how can a staff this big not know the rules over half way through the season?

2. Stubbornness - He adapts slowly, refuses to play the best players if they are younger, most of the time. He also gives players and coaches more chances than they deserve. He didn't change up the offense for two years, we had two years of stagnation and he refused to change until this year. He has yet to force the D to change, we continue to play the same regardless if we are getting sacks or not, DB's continue not to turn and locate the ball even when they could etc...

3. Talent Evaluation/Development - While we have some good talent evaluators at Tennessee, Josh himself has been really bad at evaluating QB talent, at least since he has been at Tennessee. Also WR was an issue till this year it seemed, why did it take so long to fix these things? Hopefully they figured that blind spot out, remember though, If it was not for Joe Milton getting hurt Hendon Hooker would have sat on the bench, if it was not for the COVID year players we would have been in a world of hurt last year and this year to a degree.

4. Preparedness - Multiple games every year we go into not prepared, making critical mistakes and losing or almost losing to inferior teams. We win many of these games just because we have better overall talent, but those games should never be that close. TBF Other teams do this from time to time, Georgia comes to mind, But Georgia has one or two of these games a year, that they normally win, we on the other hand have about 4 and we are lucky if we win half of them.

5. Blindness - This is the biggest issue I see with Josh. Anyone who pays attention could clearly see we need more people on the DL, proven talent and depth. Anyone could see we were about to lose TONS of production from 2024, the type of production that you can't just get back without using the transfer portal. Think about it, it's very scary to think that if Nico stayed, just how bad would we be. Josh is very LUCKY, becasue for all the mistakes Joey makes, he also makes some really good plays, that I doubt Nico would make, and they fully expected Nico to be our QB this year. How can we lose so much of our production and think we are going to be ok with Nico at QB. This is what we lost from 2024, Omari Thomas, Omarr Norman-Lott, Elijah Simmons, James Pearce Jr, Jayson Jenkins, Jakobe Thomas, and Will Brooks. I can recall many plays from each one of these guys that helped us win games, critical plays that we might not win the game if they don't make them. I can't be the only one who seen this coming, our D taking huge steps back, this concerns me because as I said above, if Nico stays we are probably lose the Arkansas and Mississippi state games. We would be 1-5 in the SEC.. and Josh would probably be fired.

All of this being said I don't want Josh to be fired, I want him to make changes, but I'm losing confidence that he will do it, or do it fast enough to save his job, and our program from being bad again. If you get mad at me over that, I don't care, I've been a VFL and will always be, I just don't want a repeat of the bad years. I want Tennessee to be how I was when I was a kid, dominant, feared, winning championships, and we will never get there if Josh settles with the state of things now and makes no changes. I have hope he will, hopefully this past game will be the catalyst for change.

You should title this thread “ evidence that my mother did drugs while pregnant with me”

 

[Teezy]

This post is to point out why those who are saying Josh deserves no criticism are wrong, and why I personally don't think Josh will achieve anything beyond the occasional play off appearance here at Tennessee. That being said this is not a call to fire Josh, that would be stupid with all of the coaching changes going on right now. Also if you are fine with mediocrity, if you are fine being average and not great, Josh is the prefect guy for you, just move along from this post, call me stupid for my concern, all of the typical BS I get instead of listening to the legitimate complaints.

1. Clock management - He has no idea what the rules are. Josh literally didn't know the clock was not stopping late into the Oklahoma game, not the first game he has mismanaged the clock. In this past game he had to have the ref explain the rules to him right at the two minute mark. This is a huge red flag, how are the players suppose to know the rules if the coaches don't know them, how can a staff this big not know the rules over half way through the season?

2. Stubbornness - He adapts slowly, refuses to play the best players if they are younger, most of the time. He also gives players and coaches more chances than they deserve. He didn't change up the offense for two years, we had two years of stagnation and he refused to change until this year. He has yet to force the D to change, we continue to play the same regardless if we are getting sacks or not, DB's continue not to turn and locate the ball even when they could etc...

3. Talent Evaluation/Development - While we have some good talent evaluators at Tennessee, Josh himself has been really bad at evaluating QB talent, at least since he has been at Tennessee. Also WR was an issue till this year it seemed, why did it take so long to fix these things? Hopefully they figured that blind spot out, remember though, If it was not for Joe Milton getting hurt Hendon Hooker would have sat on the bench, if it was not for the COVID year players we would have been in a world of hurt last year and this year to a degree.

4. Preparedness - Multiple games every year we go into not prepared, making critical mistakes and losing or almost losing to inferior teams. We win many of these games just because we have better overall talent, but those games should never be that close. TBF Other teams do this from time to time, Georgia comes to mind, But Georgia has one or two of these games a year, that they normally win, we on the other hand have about 4 and we are lucky if we win half of them.

5. Blindness - This is the biggest issue I see with Josh. Anyone who pays attention could clearly see we need more people on the DL, proven talent and depth. Anyone could see we were about to lose TONS of production from 2024, the type of production that you can't just get back without using the transfer portal. Think about it, it's very scary to think that if Nico stayed, just how bad would we be. Josh is very LUCKY, becasue for all the mistakes Joey makes, he also makes some really good plays, that I doubt Nico would make, and they fully expected Nico to be our QB this year. How can we lose so much of our production and think we are going to be ok with Nico at QB. This is what we lost from 2024, Omari Thomas, Omarr Norman-Lott, Elijah Simmons, James Pearce Jr, Jayson Jenkins, Jakobe Thomas, and Will Brooks. I can recall many plays from each one of these guys that helped us win games, critical plays that we might not win the game if they don't make them. I can't be the only one who seen this coming, our D taking huge steps back, this concerns me because as I said above, if Nico stays we are probably lose the Arkansas and Mississippi state games. We would be 1-5 in the SEC.. and Josh would probably be fired.

All of this being said I don't want Josh to be fired, I want him to make changes, but I'm losing confidence that he will do it, or do it fast enough to save his job, and our program from being bad again. If you get mad at me over that, I don't care, I've been a VFL and will always be, I just don't want a repeat of the bad years. I want Tennessee to be how I was when I was a kid, dominant, feared, winning championships, and we will never get there if Josh settles with the state of things now and makes no changes. I have hope he will, hopefully this past game will be the catalyst for change.

I don’t like it when people assume responsibility over EVERYTHING that happens in a game on the coach. I get it, everyone wants to claim responsibility but let’s be honest with ourselves here. Players not executing plays that the coach put them in position to execute is not the coach’s fault. Don’t care how many times you say it’s his responsibility or any of that. Because if they’re in position in the first place, that means they’ve executed before. They were COACHED. And sometimes they don’t execute. It’s part of the game. Only 3 active coaches in college football have won a championship. I’d rather have Heupel than anyone other than those 3 to be honest. You say he’s slow to adapt, but he’s INVENTING. People are adapting HIS offense. How many times did you see Alabama or Georgia run tempo before Heupel? Watch a game or two today and come back to me.

 

[BernardKingGOAT]

I don’t like it when people assume responsibility over EVERYTHING that happens in a game on the coach. I get it, everyone wants to claim responsibility but let’s be honest with ourselves here. Players not executing plays that the coach put them in position to execute is not the coach’s fault. Don’t care how many times you say it’s his responsibility or any of that. Because if they’re in position in the first place, that means they’ve executed before. They were COACHED. And sometimes they don’t execute. It’s part of the game. Only 3 active coaches in college football have won a championship. I’d rather have Heupel than anyone other than those 3 to be honest. You say he’s slow to adapt, but he’s INVENTING. People are adapting HIS offense. How many times did you see Alabama or Georgia run tempo before Heupel? Watch a game or two today and come back to me.

I heard two handfuls of former NFL players say the exact same thing about execution yesterday on the talk shows.

 

[TJSVOLS]

I've gotten to the point that I just laugh at the silliness of it. There's somewhat of an entitled mindset with some of these folks who think they know more about the team than Heupel

The Op is either a troll or a complete clown.