Feldman interview with Dobbs

Marveling? Nah, I was just reading through the thread and decided to work in as many Passion Pit songs as possible as quickly as possible and have it still make sense. Why would I marvel at what has been the M.O. of this board since its inception?

But to the rest of your post: optimism is merely a positive outlook towards future events. And a positive outlook towards future events is necessarily relative to the status quo.. And the status quo is pure dogshit. And so I would flip what you wrote around 180 degrees and ask: "when you haven't had a winning season since 2009 and you just came off a 5-7 season in the first year -- first years for coaches being historically worse than second years and often significantly so -- of the Jones tenure, but you've just upgraded talent at seemingly every position except the offensive line (which underperformed anyway), then expecting the 2014 season to be either less than or equal to the status quo is silly, yes"

Your mileage may vary. And all the cool kids are doom and gloom these days. If the 8th were a HS, the goth kids and the emo kids would be running shit.

 

With me it's not so much a matter of optimism or pessimism, but looking at what Bajakian's offenses did at Cincinnati, considering the obvious limitations the offense had last year, and thinking that it's not fair to just assume he's going to fail. But that gives some folks around here a boner, so don't let me bring y'all down.

 

I think the problem is/was, as you said, the limitations were obvious- yet it was as if he couldn't see them.

 

And maybe he could. How do you scheme around a QB who can't throw, running backs who can't run, and receivers who can't get open or catch, especially in year 1 when you're trying to install your system?

 

Yep VNesque.

You are so far off on this that it isn't in the same galaxy.

 

Kick me in the [penis]....

It would be less painful.

 

#getsit


The notion of a throwaway year infuriates me. The lack of any attempt to adapt to at least lessen the impact of our glaring offensive ineptitude is what I've been saying all along.

 

I disagree.

Jancek is a proven failure. Bajakian ran a no read option option last year. It's hard to say the staff looked great.

The entire staff recruited well and the players didn't quit on the coaches like the previous 3 seasons. That was nice, but it should be expected at Tennessee.

Bajakian had good numbers against MAC and Big East coaches. He's now scheming against former NFL coaches in a conference that is considered the triple A team of the NFL. That's a huge leap in competition.

That being said, he had jack shit last year for weapons. He had an undersized WR in Pig, a true freshman WR that had been a QB in high school and a RB that never really lived up to what he could have been.

It is hard to gauge how good he is considering the limitations he had last season, but he didn't look like a good coach. Now, this season, he's got a lot of talent at the skill positions, but QB is either unproven or mediocre and the OL have 4 new starters (Jackson started a few games at guard before redshirting). This year, it will work due to a lot of talent or fail due to lack of QB play. Bajakian and Butch brought Dobbs on board and kept Ferguson. They're now responsible for bad QB play.

 

Me too, but the AD was telling him he had 4 years guaranteed to get things running smoothly. Butch was smart enough to not call it year zero.

 

you can be optimistic for any reason at all, including none whatsoever.

One can be pessimistic exactly the same way.

I'm pessimistic because I saw little evidence of even decent coaching last year from our coordinators, we are replacing an entire offensive line, RBs are new, LBs have proven slow, DL is a complete question mark. DBs might be respectable but are as unproven as any other.

My scant bit of optimism stems from it being year 2 in a system, solid WRs apparently, talent at TE, young talent at RB and we have an unknown at QB.

I'm not being irrational in my negativity here.

 

He was that smart, but it was obvious they saw last year as year zero whether they said it or not. That just doesn't sit well with me. They've recruited & I think Butch does work hard, so we'll see. Contrary to what some think they know, I don't want to see this staff fail.

 

Nega-Vol


On a serious note, you #getit too.

 

I've said over and over I'm on the same page with Jancek.

Right on the QB play, they own Dobbs and Ferguson and if they aren't good enough it's on them.

Right, Big East, MAC, but it's still football.

I'm not predicting anything. All I'm saying is that I can't much look at last year and make much of a judgment either way. I'm not sure what you can do to look like a good coach when you have basically no options. The guy may fail miserably. But let's at least see how he does when he's not going into an MMA fight as a paraplegic.

 

Adapt it to what?

 

**** that. There's plenty of livable real estate between Volnation and the pits of Hell.

 

I don't know if a 'throwaway year' is how I look at it. A long term project, certainly. Foundation has to be laid. (Especially after the ****er that was here for 3 years prior.) Otherwise you're starting over again this year IMO.

 

That's their job that they get paid well to figure out.

 

Figured.

 

Sure did look like it...

 

I"m optimistic because of the potential promise the future holds due to the impressive frosh class that UT is bringing in but then I'm crushed by the reality of the situation.

We have another year with a brutal schedule. We can't be flat against Utah State. We need to beat Florida. We need to beat Vandy (which is almost laughably depressing as a requirement) and we need to play well in expected losses (Oklahoma, Bama, Georgia).

If we're competitive in every game and our team/playcalling isn't full potato I may allow myself some optimism. However, until then, the nightmare that was the Vandy game will forever ruin my outlook. Everything good up to the USC win was undone by the next 4 games. That Bama-Mizzou-Auburn-Vandy stretch brought most people straight back down to earth (depth/talent problems or not)... hard.