This schedule is perfect for Pruitt to have a big year 2. After Bama and UGA, our hardest game is either South Carolina at home, Mississippi State (replacing Fitzgerald) at home, or Butch jr. in Gainesville.
I remember the last time we were destined to win the east. We had the scheduled, the east was weak, we had the talent, oh, the stars were aligned for us.
Tennessee is three years from challenging either UGA or Bama, bare minimum, and if even then. But Groves’ reminding me (and everyone else) that you’re always just two classes away from closing and catching the talent gap, by essentially turning over the roster, is both true and one of the most positive things I’ve read in a long time.
That team should have been better, though. Smart really didn’t impress his first year. Richt left the cupboard far from bare. That coaching job with this Vols roster is a 4 or 5 win season.
Watching UGA’s Chaney-led offense makes me think. Is Smart meddling with the playcalling? Because Chaney has been about 200,000x more patient with the run than he ever was here. Or was Dooley meddling with the playcalling while Chaney was here? Was Chaney so quick to go pass happy at Arkansas?
Chaney did pass quite a bit at Arkansas. I don't think it's very hard to be patient with the run when you have the running backs UGA has. Chaney had Poole, Neal and Lane here to go along with Bray, Hunter, Rogers then Patterson. I would be quick to give up on the run too.
He gave up on it some games we lost while averaging over 5 a carry. He also refused to throw it over the middle of the field to our NFL tight end. I still think he’s mediocre at best as a playcaller.
They basically hit a hail mary first. Just making the point about 2 years. Ga now going after titles and was beaten by Butch back to back.
I understand your point, and it’s a fair one. But the disparity between what Smart inherited, and what Pruitt inherited - from a standpoint of talent, depth and hell, even strength and conditioning - is so vast as to make the two situations almost incomparable, outside the most basic parameters (eg both were New coaches, both teams were in the SECE, etc.). That’s my point.
Historically, yes. Actually, maybe not. Again, you’ve got to consider both the relative position and trajectory of teams before you can calculate the distance between them, and predict future results. First, Tennessee is in a damned sizable and now decade long hole, and frankly, this season isn’t going to do a whole lot to cut our distance to the surface. At best, we’ll at lest be certain that we’ve started climbing out of it, but it’s still a long, long way to go. I think we’ll get better as the season goes along, for sure, but it’s highly unlikely that it’ll be anywhere nearly enough to make an appreciable difference, tbh. But admittedly, I am a fire-branded preacher in the Church of Jimmy’s and Joe’s, and not X’s & O’s, and I simply don’t believe that any staff is capable of turning a player entirely into something they aren’t. Second, you’ve got to consider not only how stratospherically far UGA and Bama are right now, both in relation to Tennessee and all of college football - but also how meteorically fast they each continue to climb. They’re not only stacking 5-Star on 5-Star on 5-Star...but are taking the very recruits who we most need to close the gap. Recruiting is a zero sum game, and we don’t even have a a full hand, really, as things now stand. These programs aren’t going to slow down and wait for us, by any means. And I guess I’ll say that these are arguably the two best teams in college football, just to appear objective...but that they definitely are is, at least in my opinion, beyond any serious debate. And, as it now stands, Tennessee would have to beat BOTH teams in the regular season, and (likely) Bama TWICE and in ONE season, to win an SECC, and have even a remote chance of ever making the playoffs. Ever. We had 10 years to re-kindle our 90’s dominance of the SECE, with Richt at UGA, an aged Spurrier at USC, and a string of clowns at UF...and where we could have competed with and held off Smart’s arrival at UGA...but we absolutely pissed it away and wasted it in not only making the two worst hires in the history of our program, but perhaps in the history of the SEC, and back-to-back, to boot.
