Jones, "We don't hope to win, we expect to win."

Boom?

 

Jones: "Expectations will always be high at Tennessee, but internal expectations will always be the highest."

 

It is time to win

 

"Toto, we aren't in Cincinnati anymore."

 

Undefukingfeated, Dude.

 

Jones knows what he has, an extremely talented team in a down SEC east.

 

I'm sure he has his list of excuses ready if the season doesn't live up to expectations. He says stuff like this and I really want to get on board, but all he does is dampen expectations on the front end and continue telling us how 6-6 is an amazing feat over the course of the year.

 

And he's in Year 3 after losing, twice, to a bad Florida team.

He has little equity in terms of wins to buy him more time outside of beating ranked Carolina in 2013.

In 2014, he lost by an average of 16 points to his ranked opponents (5). Largest by 31 to Ole Miss... closest by 3 to UGA.

The only quality(ish) wins in 2014 were against teams that were barely above .500.

So, long story short, he knows he's been underwhelming on the field. He knows the only thing he's really done right to this point is recruit and it's time to start cashing in.

 

Year 3 is typically the year that programs either take a step forward or take a step back under a coach. Time to man up...

 

All of this. 8 wins minimum this year or he has to go to a BCS bowl game in 2016 to save his job.

 

I hope he's right.

 

"64% of the players on our roster have been in our football program one year or less."

- Butch Jones press conference today

He's already laying the foundation and putting the bricks up for a wall of excuses.

 

47 scholarship players have been here less than a year (18 non-EEs from last year, 29 recruits this year). Either we only have 73 on the roster, or he's talking walk-ons.

 

The fanbase shouldn't care, but for some reason, we have a large contingent that loves making excuses for the highest paid man on Knoxville's campus

 

Aaaaand right back down to earth.

It is year three. Unless he was specifically asked about this, this kind of thing shouldn't even be coming out of the HFC's mouth.

 

Just out of curiosity, I looked up Alabama's 2008 roster (2nd year under Saban) according to the NCAA's archives as I knew they were a pretty youthful team. They had 69 1st/2nd year players (for 62% and 19 of them played 10 or more (out of 14) games. While that isn't the same as "one year or less" Jones might be going by on a technicality so I just ran all FR/SO. In fact, out of all players with 14 games played, 6 were FR/SO. That's out of 25 total. Another 7 FR/SO played 13 games for Alabama.

Anyone recall if Saban, in his 2nd year, was even making excuses? Pretty sure he just shut up and put up and turned a dead-in-the-road has been program into an instant contender and then ignited one of the most dominant runs in College football history.

Just asked a reasonable (yes, they're out there) Bama fan I work with if he recalled Saban talking about his youth on the 2008 roster and he said, and I quote "Hell no. Saban didn't make excuses. He'd call someone out, sure, but talking about how much youth you have that sounds weak, even if it's a problem". Straight from the asses mouth.

 

Buncha expectation-setting over-achievers in here.

I bet you guys think we can do better than a TaxSlayer Bowl win too, huh?

 

Expectations are the problem

 

While that might be true he left out the part about them being insanely talented. Think about that statement and the players who fall under that.

 

Saban is a robot. He just repeats "Trust the process", "it's a process", "the process is taking place" and "we win when we follow the process".