2nd/3rd Year Rule

I am a big believer in the 2nd/3rd year rule, where if a coach doesn't win anything of importance, a conference championship or national championship, they will not win anything at that school.

Historically, this is, with a few exceptions, a cold stone fact. And we are now in the third year and Heupel will not have won shit, will be shitting the bed on the road still and cannot put two halves together. I don't care where he started at with the roster, culture, etc, that is just an excuse.

I am not saying fire up the coaching search, but we are going on 25 years with no championship of any kind and I don't think it will change in the near future.

Just not sure I can take it any longer.

 

Okay.

 

We won the only game that matters last year. He gets this year as a shit-the-bed year. Next year is at Neyland, you win this game or somebody else can.

 

Heupel has us set up to dominate and we will dominate

 

Okay.

 

Routinely winning 9-10 to hopefully start stacking a roster is better than where we were. Plus with the playoff expansion that's enough to have a shot at getting in the field every year. Going forward we don't have to be ranked 1 or 2, just 12 or better to have a bite at the apple.

 

I don't care about the playoff field. I'm old and grumpy. The ONLY thing I care about is the Alabama game, win that game every year and whatever else happens is...whatever...you can stay here forever.

 

There are some holes. But he's got some dudes here, and he coaches to win.

He has to address the line, and he's gotta figure out how to get us some confidence in road games. Those two things can doom us to the middle of the SEC pack if they're not addressed. But man he's got us throwing haymakers with Alabama. We've wilted two of the three, but we've been in the game in the fourth quarter in Tuscaloosa how many times since Saban got there? Four? Half of them are Heupel. And all of the wins.

 

I'm still more mad about wilting against Florida than Bama.

Both games, though, show troubling signs in Year 3.

 

It's the same problem. We took leads early both times. But the defensive playcalling got conservative, and the offense turned one mistake into six. And yeah, there were some terrible calls in both games. But we had the gameplan to win and then we got super uptight and stopped playing ball. Arguably coming out strong in the first quarter is an improvement over our road performance last year (see: Pitt, Georgia, South Carolina). But that's twice we've had teams where we wanted and just got scared to lose.

I don't think Heupel is scared to lose. Heupel is still calling an aggressive game. But Milton can't clear his head after a bad play, and Banks starts sitting back and letting QBs work.

 

I sort of think Heupel is like a tennis player caught between the net and the baseline with this team. He is torn between being aggressive and doing his thing and needing to manage this bunch differently, and it’s getting him in no man’s land.

 

I agree that a lot of his 4th down calls are made as if we have last years offense.

 

Bill Snyder and Hayden Fry disagree. Of course, they like Heupel actually had to build a program.

I don't think a coach has ever done that when the table wasn't set for them by their predecessor. I mean, shit, what do you think Saban does at LSU and Alabama if he doesn't walk into a locker room with NFL talent waiting on him?

 

I take your point, but at the same time Heupel inherited Hooker, Hyatt, Mays, Wright, and Tillman.

The bigger issue for me is walking into a division with a team that's pressing for a conference record win streak. How many of those year two coaches win a conference championship if the best team of the country is in their division? Some of them do, no doubt. But year two Saban at LSU lost three games. If he's in the same division as either Tennessee or Florida, he doesn't win the SEC because he's not in Atlanta.

 

Heupel's going to be fine here

 

Let’s not pretend Hooker or Hyatt had ever amounted to anything before Heupel though. We only got Hooker because he lost his job at VA Tech - and Justin Fuente’s shitty VA Tech at that. And Hyatt didn’t really do anything his first year with Heupel even. Hyatt openly admitted he didn’t work hard enough his first two years here.

 

Nobody will benefit from the SEC expansion more than us. Not having to play both Bama and UGA every year will lighten the load a lot.

 

That's absolutely true, but I'm not sure how unusual it is in these cases. The coaches with big year two successes usually walk into teams that are talented but underperforming. They figure out a way to maximize the talent. (Which I think is exactly what Heupel has done)

 

Hyatt was coached by an overweight qb and had Velus in front of him, I can see mailing it in

 

It’s not like we were loaded though. We had isolated spots of talent but no real depth. This is Tennessee. Even our shittiest coaches usually get a small handful of good players.