It’s not even October,
and yet, the Tennessee season is already, for all intents and purposes, over.
It’s been a disastrous second year for Jeremy Pruitt, the team, Jarrett
Guarantano, Phillip Fulmer, the fans, hell, really everyone who wears/cheers for the orange
and white.
Who involved in the
program has had the worst season? Let’s examine:
Jarrett
Guarantano
JG is an obvious pick
here, as he got a ton of preseason hype and has done nothing but remind the fanbase of
when Nathan Peterman was the quarterback. JG threw three interceptions in 12
games last season; he’s already got four in 2019 in just four games. The BYU loss
can be laid squarely at his feet, and his performance against Florida led to
him getting benched to start the second half.
I was a JG defender for
the last two years because no quarterback in the SEC had gotten worse
protection than him, and because when he actually had time to throw, he
delivered a nice, accurate football. I don’t know what’s happened this season;
maybe he’s taken too many hits? Regardless, he’s been really awful, and the days of his accurate arm are gone, it seems.
It’s difficult to be too
hard on him considering he’s already graduated and might not even be on the
team next year, even though he does have another year of eligibility. He’s not an
important piece of… whatever is getting built in Knoxville going forward.
The
Team
Really bad year for
everyone here too. Jauan Jennings declared himself the leader and then dropped
an easy TD catch against Florida that ended up getting picked off on the
deflection. He then committed a dumb personal foul on a punt return.
Leadership!
The offensive line is… a
wet paper bag. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I’ve made that same joke a million
times. Give me a more accurate representation of their blocking “prowess” than
that and I'll start using it.
The defense is a train
wreck as well. I can’t believe how slow they look. I don’t know if its team speed as
much as it seems like they have no idea what they’re doing play to play. The
pass rush is as non-existent as my high school dating career, and the secondary
looks more lost than Ray Charles in a corn maze. Defensive coordinator Derrick
Ansley seems like a guy that should be one and done, only Fulmer guaranteed his
contract for three years at $1 million
per season. Really. Are we sure Phillip should be the AD?
Back to the offense; they
can’t run the ball, the quarterback play is terrible, and even worse, there’s
not competent QB on this roster. Which means the Vols will be relying
heavily on Harrison Bailey next season, the number 1 ranked quarterback in the
state of Georgia, to come in as a true freshman next season and be the guy.
That’s a total tossup.
The
Fans
The Vol fans have to be
the least happy people in the history of sports who have ever cheered for a
team, and with good reason. This program has done nothing but Seagal them over the last 12 years, and there is no end in sight to the weekly ass
beatings.
The fans are going to
come close to filling Neyland next Saturday for the Georgia game, where their
beloved Vols are going to lose by a score of 63-0. They’ll do the same for
Mississippi State the next week, where the Tennessee will once again find a way
to Butch it up. They’ll revolve their entire day around the Alabama game the
next Saturday, only to watch their team be out of it by the halfway mark
of the first quarter. And so on.
There are still some,
hell, probably a lot of Pruitt defenders left in the fanbase. But what will
they be saying at the end of October when this team is 1-6 and about to face
South Carolina? What about when a bad Gamecocks team beats them in Neyland? How
should they feel about 1-7? Will there be any defenders at that point? Why
would there be?
Phillip
Fulmer
It’s too soon to say
whether or not Fulmer is a good athletic director, but he’s got a lot riding on
this Pruitt hire working out. This was his handpicked coach, and he’s greenlit
everything that Pruitt wants to do. Fulmer has taken a lot of grief in the national
media for wearing coaching gear to work and for jumping into an offensive
lineman drill last year, but at almost 70 years old, I think even he realizes
it’s unrealistic for him to be the head coach again. Something to monitor going
forward though I suppose.
Jeremy
Pruitt
The biggest loser of the
season. Pruitt is 6-10 through sixteen games, and the Vols, who returned
sixteen starters from last year, are as bad as they’ve ever been, and significantly worse than they were in 2018.
This team at the bare
minimum should be 3-1. There’s no excuses for losing the Georgia State game or
the BYU game where by the end of it, you had a 99% chance to win. There’s
normally no shame in losing to Florida in Gainesville, but when the thumping is
34-3 with a backup quarterback making his first start in seven years, then
yeah, there’s a lot of shame.
Things aren’t getting
better in Knoxville. Pruitt said on Wednesday that the team was 100 times better than
they were at this time last year. Jeremy, that’s dumb. And wrong. You know what
you didn’t do last year? Lose to Georgia State. If you’re 100 times better, I don’t
know, you start 3-1 and are very competitive at Florida.
Pruitt also doesn’t help
himself in these postgame pressers, where he talks about Tennessee’s
performance with the same energy and passion that he’d discuss the intricacies
of the hide and seek game that his kindergarten class used to play. He talks
like a guy that is in the most secure seat in the country. Reporters lob
softball questions at Nick Saban, and half the time it seems like he wants to
fight them to the death. And he’s winning games! A little more fire from Pruitt
would be nice.
He’s basically Butch
Jones in these media appearances, only with a Southern accent and less
platitudes. I can’t believe I’m typing this, but he actually uses the word
“execute” and “fight” more than Lyle did. How is that possible?
Pruitt’s in over his
head. He should be a defensive coordinator somewhere.
And don’t give me the
crap about “12 year mess”. Come on. That doesn’t hold water when you were
favored in your first three games and only won one. Or when you went to
Gainesville against an AT BEST above average Florida team and lost by 31
points. Is this roster really that bad? They’ve recruited pretty well there the
last decade plus despite all of their issues. The cupboard will never be bare
enough in Knoxville to lose to Georgia State.
The Vols real problem was
2012, when they went as cheap as hell on the coaching search and hired Butch. If
there was ever a time to summon all of your resources and throw a great offer
at someone, that would’ve been the year. Instead they acted like they were
Tulsa or some school with no money and hired Butch. The Derek Dooley spot was a
tough one because Kiffin left them at the altar and they had to scramble right
before signing day to get someone. It was unfortunate, but it happened. So
Dooley gets three years and it doesn’t work out. Oh well. Now it’s time to hire
the right guy.
And that right guy was in
their state! James Franklin had just won 9 games at Vanderbilt! Vanderbilt! But
no, Tennessee was too good to hire Vanderbilt’s head coach. Couldn’t do that!
“But Matt, But Matt, But
Matt! What if James Franklin didn’t want the job?” Then you give him so much
money that he doesn’t say no. Everyone has a price, and that price shouldn’t be too
hard to get to when you’re the coach at Vanderbilt.
Do you think there’s any
chance the Vols are in this sorry of a state if they hired Franklin instead of
Butch in 2012? No way, right? Franklin isn’t perfect, but he’s already won the
Big Ten and has gone 34-9 at Penn State since 2016. Tennessee is 19-22 over
that same stretch.
So instead they get
“Brick by Brick” for five years until that implodes, which leads to the
coaching search of 2017 that was so botched and leaky (Fulmer’s fault? Seems
likely) that John Currie got fired as he was offering the job to Mike Leach.
This leads to Fulmer accepting the AD position and hiring Jeremy Pruitt, who
honestly probably went into the interview and said as many Fulmer buzzwords as
he could possibly think of to land the job.
You know what wasn’t the
problem? Firing Fulmer in 2008. This is the popular fan talking point every
once in a while when the program sucks, like now. Would Tennessee be in as bad
of shape as they are if Fulmer hadn’t gotten canned? Probably not. But let’s
not have revisionist history about the end of the Fulmer era either. The
program had deteriorated. The Vols hadn’t won the conference in ten years, they
were in the midst of their second losing season in four years, and Fulmer
seemed to have lost his edge. The program needed new life, and it was sagging
under Fulmer. It was time. The fact that the last four coaching hires haven’t
worked out doesn’t mean pulling the plug on Fulmer was a mistake, it just means
that the athletic department is incompetent and has done a bad job hiring
coaches since then. Two things can be true at once.
It's going to be a long rest
of the fall down in Knoxville. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait to
watch them get their skulls caved in about five more times this season!
Now, onto the rest of the
week….
Friday
#12 Penn State at
Maryland
Arizona State at #15
California
We’ve got two really good
Friday games this week. Maryland looked like a darkhorse Big Ten East contender
through the first two weeks of the season under first year coach Mike Locksley.
Then they went to Temple and lost
20-17. Meanwhile, Penn State has played one legitimate opponent, Pittsburgh,
and held on to win 17-10.
Is the Maryland offense more
like the one that put up 79 and 63 points the first two weeks, or is it closer
to the one that struggled to move the ball against Temple and scored only 17? I have no idea.
The Terrapins have beaten
the Nittany Lions just once in their last 34 meetings dating all the way back
to 1962. This has been a hammer-nail relationship. I suspect it will stay that
way tonight.
As for Cal-Arizona State,
the Golden Bears are the only undefeated team left in the Pac 12, and already
have wins at both Washington and Ole Miss. Meanwhile, the Sun Devils have a true
freshman quarterback, Jayden Daniels, on the road at Cal, a place Arizona State
has not won at since 1997.
I think Cal is legit
good. I know Ole Miss isn’t a good team, but to win that game away from home, two
time zones over, at what amounted to a 9 am kickoff for their body clocks, was really impressive. Beating Washington on the road too and only holding
them to only 19 points was a fantastic win also. Arizona State’s best win was at
Michigan State a few weeks ago, where they managed just ten points in what was
an ugly rock fight. If the Spartans don’t botch the game tying field goal
attempt, the game goes to overtime and who knows who wins. I like Cal here by
double digits.
Prediction: Cal and Penn
State
Saturday
Texas Tech at #6 Oklahoma
Did you know that Texas Tech
ranks third in the country in fewest pass yards allowed per game? Only 133.7 yards! Granted, they’ve only played one Power 5 opponent, Arizona. But still, were
they ever at any point inside the top 100 in that statistic when Kliff
Kingsbury, the former most handsome man in college football, was the coach?
The cure for that great pass
defense is Oklahoma, who has put up 157 points in their first three games. The
Sooners rank 7th nationally in passing yards per game and 2nd
in rushing yards. Good luck Red Raiders!
This is Fox’s fifth “Big
Noon Kickoff” Game, and so far through the first four weeks they’ve had three duds. Looks
like we’re headed towards a fourth. Great start for the Big Noon Kickoff!
OU’s Lincoln Riley is THE offensive mind in college football, what Chip Kelly was eight years ago, and
the only thing that’s kept him from winning a national title to this point has
been his crappy defenses. Oklahoma ranks 53rd in the nation in yards
allowed per game so far, but they haven’t even gotten into the meat of
conference play yet, where I’m sure they’ll get torched about five or six
different times. It won’t matter, at least not tomorrow.
Prediction: Oklahoma
Northwestern at #8
Wisconsin
Northwestern has won
their last 8 road conference games, and in their last 18 games as a double
digit underdog, they’ve won ten of them outright. Meanwhile, Wisconsin has the
number 1 defense in the country and are fresh off last week’s destruction of
Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan coaching tenure. I can’t believe this is real, but Northwestern
might be the best offense the Badgers have faced all year… and they’ve only
scored 47 points in three games.
The only way this one
stays close is if the Badgers have an emotional hangover from last week’s ass
kicking over the Wolverines. Otherwise, it’s 31-7 or something like that.
Side note: the Badgers are
a team to keep an eye on in the playoff hunt, with how good their defense is and
what Jonathan Taylor gives them offensively. Their problem is going to be that
schedule; they still have home games against Michigan State and Iowa, and they’ll
travel to Ohio State on October 26th. Then they’ll have the Big Ten
Championship Game, probably against Ohio State again. Realistically, they can
probably only lose one of those three regular season games, and then they’ll
have to beat the Buckeyes and win the conference. That’s a pretty tall order.
Prediction: Wisconsin
#1 Clemson at North Carolina
Another week, another
crappy ACC opponent for the Tigers. We really should just relegate the ACC to
the Group of Five or the FCS and then let Clemson be an independent. The Tigers
haven’t played a great game against a good opponent all season, and it won’t
even really matter if they do it this weekend or not because North Carolina is not a competent team. In fact, the Tigers won’t have to play a complete game all year
until late December in the playoff and they’ll still be able to go undefeated
until then. When the second best team in your conference is Virginia, who
struggled for three quarters with Old Dominion and only beat a really awful
Florida State team at home by 7, you know your league is garbage.
Prediction: Clemson
#18 Virginia at #10 Notre
Dame
No one with a functional
brain can really believe that Virginia is the eighteenth best team in the country,
right? There’s no way.
This one feels like a huge
mismatch to me. The Irish just went to Georgia and had the ball with less than
two minutes and a chance to score the winning touchdown. Impressive. What do
you think would happen if the Cavaliers went to Georgia? Is it more likely that
they’d be down 6 in the fourth quarter, or 60?
The only way Virginia
wins here is if Notre Dame isn’t emotionally ready to play off of last week’s thriller.
Otherwise, the Irish win by double figures.
Prediction: Notre Dame
#21 USC at #17 Washington
It looks like Matt Fink
will make his first career start for USC at quarterback tomorrow as the Trojans
travel north to play the Huskies. Last week he filled in for the injured Kedon
Slovis and threw for 351 yards in USC’s upset victory over Utah.
I’ve made fun of Clay
Helton more than just about anyone, due to the fact that he looks like he should
be the nightshift janitor at a 7-Eleven, but he’s somehow managed to keep
himself afloat this season in a job that he’ll probably not have by the end of
the year. The Trojans aren’t a trainwreck in 2019 like they were last year,
but there will be a new AD at Southern Cal soon and whoever this person is,
they’ll want to make their own hire. Not that I blame them, of course; I wouldn’t
want the guy that works behind the counter at the gas station coaching my
football team either.
As far as this game, I
like the Huskies. Quarterback Jacob Eason was phenomenal last week at BYU (24-28,
3 touchdowns) as Washington laid the smackdown 45-19. This isn’t always a good
indicator of how a game will play out, but USC did play at BYU two weeks ago
and lose in overtime. Washington went there and the game was never in doubt. Tomorrow won't be either.
Prediction: Washington
Ole Miss at Alabama
This is our SEC on CBS
game, and it’s really pretty dreadful. The Rebels have two wins, against Southeastern
Louisiana and Arkansas. SE Louisiana might as well be Roast Beef Tech, while
Arkansas lost to San Jose State last Saturday, a program that had two wins in their
last 24 games. I don’t think this is a great Alabama team outside of Tua, but
it won’t matter tomorrow because the Rebels are bad.
Side note: Ole Miss’s
head coach Matt Luke looks like the monthly winner of the local hot wing eating
contest, particularly when he sweats profusely in that Mississippi heat. What
does that have to do with tomorrow? Nothing, I just thought it was worth mentioning.
Prediction: Alabama
Kentucky at South Carolina
No one outside of Clay
Helton needs a win more this weekend than South Carolina’s Will Muschamp, who wants
to avoid dropping to 1-4 in what is a very pivotal fourth year for his job
security going forward. Unfortunately for him, his team is bad. The Gamecocks
have given up 81 points combined to Alabama and Missouri the last two weeks,
and have only scored 37 themselves. I don’t have to love Mark Stoops or Sawyer
Smith or the Wildcats as a whole to think they can go to South Carolina and win
(And I don’t, by the way. Mark Stoops looks like a guy who would curse out the
umpires at a little league game while wearing a sleeveless tee shirt).
Prediction: Kentucky
Mississippi State at #7
Auburn
The Tigers might finish
the year as the best 3 loss team in the country. Incredibly, they’ve still got
Alabama, LSU, and Georgia all left on the schedule, plus Florida on the road,
which isn’t impossible but definitely not easily winnable. I don’t think they’ll
have any problems with Mississippi State this week, but I wonder how Auburn
people are going to be feeling at the end of the year when they’ve still got north
of $20 million committed to Gus Malzahn, a guy who will have one season with
less than three losses in seven years.
Prediction: Auburn
#5 Ohio State at Nebraska
This is the biggest game
for the Cornhuskers in a long time. College Gameday will be there. It’s the ABC
Saturday Night Game. The eyes of the nation will be upon them (or maybe they’ll
be on Scott Frost, the new most handsome man in college football).
Ohio State has won all
four of its games so far by at least 24 points, and they scored 76 unanswered
last week against Miami of Ohio. Joel Klatt thinks they’re the best team in the
country, and they’ll certainly have a great shot to prove that this week
because I think they’re going to slaughter the Cornhuskers.
Scott Frost very well may
end up winning big at Nebraska, but it won’t start tomorrow. In fact, the only
real question is if the Huskers can keep the Buckeyes from covering. They’re 17
point favorites. I don’t give out gambling advice here normally, but if I were
you, I’d bet the mortgage on the Buckeyes.
Prediction: Ohio State
Enjoy football this
weekend! You deserve it.
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