Butch Jones Hires Someone We've Never Heard Of To Be His New Offensive Coordinator

Tennessee’s former offensive coordinator, Mike DeBord, was the most hated person in the state during 2016 (yes, even more than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump). Seriously, the only person that got it worse than him on Twitter the last six months was Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Geez....

Anyway, do I think DeBord was even a serviceable play-caller? Of course not. The offense was unimaginative during the first half of every game that mattered, Dobbs somehow wildly regressed as a passer, compared to what he was the year prior, and they never seemed to be able to get anything positive going until they were already down double digits. The “Hurd right, Hurd left, incomplete pass, punt” offense became more repetitive and tiresome than the Bernie Sanders “THE TOP 1% OF THE TOP 1% OF THE TOP 1% ARE HOARDING ALL THE PUDDING CUPS” rants we all heard the last year and a half.

Suffice to say, DeBord’s departure made most people happy, and optimism was high among Vol fans about who Butch would hire to replace him. It's hard to blame them for getting their hopes up, because some of the names up for consideration would've been absolute home runs. Could they get former Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich? Or Tee Martin, their former national title-winning QB, the guy that's now in charge of the high-powered USC offense? How about some young up and comer that's created an exciting attack at another school?

Or, how about none of the above? When I saw today that the Vols had hired Larry Scott to fill their vacancy, I had these two thoughts almost instantaneously:

1.      Who the hell is Larry Scott?

2.      Yeah, because that’s going to beat Saban….

I mean…… LARRY BLEEPING SCOTT? Hell, he might be a nice guy that goes to church 4 times a week and feeds the homeless, but really? That’s the big sexy move that’s going to help push this team over the top?

Here are Scott’s credentials:

·         Played offensive tackle at South Florida from 1996-99

·         Had a plurality of different high school coaching jobs in Florida from 2001-04

·         Grad assistant at USF in 2006

·         Tight end coach at USF from 2007-08 and from 2010-11

·         Offensive line coach at USF in 2009

·         Running back coach at USF in 2012

·         Tight end coach at Miami from 2013-15

·         Interim head coach at Miami in 2015 (went 4-2)

·         Tight end coach at Tennessee in 2016

·         Whoops, that’s it

Again…. Yeah, you’re right Butch, that’s really going to beat Saban…

Here’s Butch’s statement on the hiring: “Larry played an important role in the success we had offensively last year and was heavily involved in all aspects of our game plan, both during the week and on gameday. We felt it was vital to maintain our continuity on offense and keep building on what we have established the last four seasons”.

What? “Success”?  I mean, they finished 24^th in points and 40^th in yards in FBS last year. They were… fine? I certainly won’t be bouncing my grandkids on my knee 50 years from now, telling them about the time Tennessee scored 3 first half points against Florida, managed 10 total against ‘Bama, had 7 turnovers against Texas A&M, or when they blew a double digit halftime lead to Vanderbilt by scoring only 3 points in the second half. And I’m sorry, but “We felt it was vital to maintain our continuity on offense and keep building on what we have established the last four seasons”? Yeah, of course, because I’d definitely love to blow three 13 point leads in the same season again, and then follow that up the next year by playing 10 bad first halves in twelve games. Getting torched by Vandy’s white receivers and losing to a South Carolina team that was starting what should have been a senior in high school at quarterback is exactly the kind of success I want going forward! Sign me up for 10 more years of this!

This hire is so bad that it reminded me of another awful Tennessee assistant coaching decision, one that occurred all the way back in 2012, when Derek Dooley picked Alabama’s linebackers’ coach Sal Sunseri to run his defense. This choice seemed odd at the time, considering Sunseri’s 3-4 philosophy was vastly different from the 4-3 scheme the Vols had run the last two years. Plus, 2012 was a really important year for Dooley; it was his third season, and 2011 had ended so poorly (the loss to Kentucky) that many Tennessee fans were ready to kick him to the curb before the season even started.

We all know how it turned out, of course. Sunseri was a disaster, the defense gave up more points than a JV high school team trying to stop Aaron Rodgers, and Dooley got fired before the season even ended.

2017 is to Butch what 2012 was to Dooley. Vol Nation has a sour taste in its mouth with the way 2016 ended, and many fans (myself included) think a coaching change is in order. They aren’t going to be happy when the offense, with a new quarterback, sputters worse than a 1987 Toyota Camry that’s 20,000 miles past needing an oil change. That feels like a real possibility with the way this offensive coordinator situation was resolved.

Which brings me to this: when is Tennessee going to stop being more cowardly than the lion from The Wizard of Oz and actually man up and start hiring some actual competent football coaches? So what if you have to spend $5-$6 million a year? Isn’t winning and making money the whole point of having the football program in the first place? And what’s the easiest way to make lots of money? BY WINNING YOU DINGUSES!!!! You’re not going to be able to cheap your way into W’s, you’ve got to spend the money on coaches like you’re Juicy J at a strip club. Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, etc. all do it, and I’m not sure why Tennessee, a top-10 revenue producing school, isn’t and hasn’t ever been interested in doing so. They can definitely afford it, which makes it even more puzzling as to why they continue to act like they’re running a non-profit soup kitchen.

Look, I get it, Butch is getting a fifth year. Even though I think he’s a gym teacher that would be rolling out the basketballs and teaching bogus nutrition classes to middle schoolers five days a week if he weren’t coaching major college football, he’s still going to be the Vol coach in 2017. I’ve accepted this. But seriously, why not offer the OC job to Mark Helfrich? Yeah sure, he'll be expensive, but if there's a chance that you could get the offensive success he had at Oregon in Knoxville, then wouldn't it be totally worth it to spend the money on him? And even if he said no, who cares? Just keep going down the list of qualified candidates until someone accepts. But to settle for Larry Scott? Who? Come on….

Which brings me to my final point: I hate comparing anyone to Nick Saban, because he’s probably the greatest college football coach I’ll ever see, but I think it’s at least fair to ask if he’d ever promote his tight end coach to be the person that handles the play-calling duties every Saturday. Seems unlikely right? Particularly when you consider that all of his offensive coordinators at Alabama (Major Applewhite, Jim McElwain, Doug Nussmeier, Lane Kiffin, and Steve Sarkisian) had at least one year of play-calling experience under their belts before they were hired to coach in Tuscaloosa, If that’s Saban’s standard at Alabama, then why shouldn’t they have a similar one at Tennessee? Of course, hiring Larry Scott to be the second most powerful person in your football program is what happens when your head coach is a middle school gym teacher and your athletic department is laden with penny-pinchers and cheapskates.

Not a great start to 2017 for Butch, a year that very well may end with him on his way out of Knoxville.