How Did Tennessee Get So Good So Fast?

Fair enough, I just don't see anything on Napier's resume to indicate a consistently reliable elite offense, especially if he's the one calling the plays.

I think we see that he can build a program from the ground up, and he's a huge step up on the recruiting trail from his predecessors in Gainesville. He might be the best recruiter we've had since Urban Meyer (Muschamp was good but only on the defensive side of the ball, but his classes were incredibly unbalanced).

But I'm not sure that's quite enough. There probably needs to be one side of the ball that you can hang your hat on every season. For a long time Bama was just about ball control, manage the game, run it down your throat, and elite defense. Granted, the game has changed, but that might still work. I personally don't care if it's offense or defense, but you need to find something. And as we've seen in Gator football for basically the entirety of the last decade, being elite on one side of the ball is by no means a guarantee that you will be an elite football team. It's just something you need. A necessary ingredient.

 

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AR is projected to be a first round pick. Hooker isn’t close.

If AR and Hooker swapped places Tennessee would be even better and Florida would be worse.

Scheme matters a ton in college football.

 

lets give credit where credit is due. they are 7-0 in the SEC. I don't care how close some games were, they won them.

 

Im' glad someone brought up Trask. UT this year has lots of parallels with UF in 2020. Both teams sorta stumbled upon a QB that in year 2 blew up and led an elite pass-happy offense with a couple stud receivers. Both defenses are under-whelming, but UT doesn't have Grantham as their DC so their defense is a little less sucky.

Now I don't expect the parallels between this UT team and UF in 2020 to hold to the point that Heupel will be fired in the middle of next season. But it does show that this could be a one-off, and UT may fall back to earth next season without Hooker and Hyatt (both could return though).

 

Yeah I was critical of the recruiting last year and our ranking stunk. He lost some really talented guys that were already on the team, many here thought he was saving slots for guys in the portal or late signers which didn’t happen.
Wishful thinking as it were.
I got sick of back and forth discussion and banging my head against the rah rah guys. The guys that were so impressed by his resume(it’s nothing great imho).

And here we are half way thought the season and there are more question marks now. I’m not saying fire the guy, but I’m not gonna ignore glaring issues. Sorry if some don’t like objectivity.
I’d like to see some decent results consistently, the D should be getting better and it certainly is not doing that by any measurements.
The offense while at times can be great I seems as if there are large periods of time where it just fizzles and I think it’s due to play calling.

 

Hooker is 25 years old.
Several others as well.

 

AR is projected to be a first round pick. Hooker isn’t close.

If AR and Hooker swapped places Tennessee would be even better and Florida would be worse.

Scheme matters a ton in college football.[/QUOTE]
The gm that drafts AR in the first round deserves it when he gets his ass fired. I love AR but that’s just plain dumb. Maybe one day he will get there but not even close so far.

 

Y’all are ridiculous criticizing our coach and anointing Heupel as some kinda savant. Yes, they are undefeated and just beat Bama, but let the season play out and see where they end up first. Last I checked, the season doesn’t end today.

Tennessee went 7-6 in Heupel’s first season with a much easier schedule than Napier’s first season…wins over Bowling Green, Tennessee Tech, Vandy and South Alabama. This same team got blown out by Emory Jones and our defense that couldn’t stop a counter play.

If you’re gonna say that’s a fast turnaround, then allow the same courtesy to our coaching staff. And oh yeah…Mullen and and McElwain both had faster turnarounds according to their first year records.

 

Tennessee started to click after we beat them last year. I think the light switched on for Hooker at that point. He was overthrowing footballs and not as effective in general until the second half of last year.
They are where there are this year because of a high octane offense, their biggest games have been in Knoxville and, as tegator80 said, “ dumb ass luck and a nice quarterback”

 

Excuse me, “pure stupid luck”.

 

But William only made $2.47M his first year. This version is far more expensive.

 

My thoughts exactly

 

Agreed. Though I can't say I love AR.

 

So, as long as we go 7-5 you are fine with it? Okay. My point is that, while we can point our fingers at what we see we don't like, "not this" isn't quite the same as "what we want". Like I said, no one is going to win a championship running the wishbone, and so passing HAS to be a part of the equation. That is a given. But once you show me a "passing crazy" team winning one (and not a beauty contest), it will the first. The only one I recall that did it (and that was a LONG time ago) was the St. Louis Rams with Kurt Warner. And they had Marshall Faulk to run the ball. And they BARELY won it (by a couple of inches on the last play of the game). Running tough IS how you win the real stuff.

I realize we all feel stuck, but knee-jerk to opposite sides doesn't get the program anywhere. We signed on with Napier, he is a "process" person, and he has to do it the way he was hired to do. Spurrier isn't going to win us any games. Sorry.

 

Being critical is fine but again, if the class holds up you also have to give credit where is do. How were you during Meyer's 2005 campaign? Meyer handcuffed that offense in 05 in order to install his offense otherwise we could have had a great season that year. 2005 Lsu had 6 turnovers in that game and yet florida could only muster up just over 200 yards of offense and lost.

Now this is where we might agree. Meyer made dramatic changes after that lsu game that helped us get some early points on Georgia and hold on to an improbable win. I'd like to see some evolution at this point especially on defense. Anything. Throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.

Only reason I quoted the recruiting thing is because I was reminded of it when you were recently defending Mullen's time here. Just seemed like you had an agenda against Napier from the beginning. I myself was not a fan of hearing he wouldn't have an OC. I was ok with bringing his DC but admit I have my reservations about that at the moment. Every other aspect has been a home run from him though. Bringing in the recruiting girls from Georgia. Bringing in Corey Raymond from lsu. Reestablishing florida high school recruiting. Overall Recruiting results. Social media. Fixing the player accommodations.

I am not the most positive outlook guy. I turned the game off at half-time because I knew what was coming. But negativity about Napier will change nothing at this point. We have enough rivals doing that for us. Time will tell what the product on the field will be but I'm not judging firmly on anything at this point.

 

And my used 1967 Pontiac cost me $700 in in 1975 and where I put 95,000 miles on it before I sold it for $500, whereas now you get a car getting ready for the junk yard for around $2,000+.

You can't make your corn grow faster today because the cost of seed and farming has gone up. Again, what "some of us" want to do is to keep saying, over and over, "are we there yet?" We get it, the taste in your mouth isn't what you want.


Drink more bourbon, until further notice.

 

Heupel is an offensive genius. His teams will be near the top of offensive output regardless of recruiting. Who knows about defense.

Of course all of that is unrelated to Napier. Sure our passing scheme is amateur right now but it’s year 1. Plus Napier is a CEO hire. How he manages these issues, how he recruits, how he instills culture, etc will be how he’s judged. Year 2 and Year 3 will be huge but we have to let it play out

 

You realize if Trey Dean knew what he was doing and doesn’t let them have all those huge plays….we probably beat them right? At home.
And we suck.

 

AR is projected to be a first round pick. Hooker isn’t close.

If AR and Hooker swapped places Tennessee would be even better and Florida would be worse.

Scheme matters a ton in college football.[/QUOTE]

So UT would be better than 1st in the country in offense and AR would be better than the Heisman favorite. Ok then. I guess that settles that.

I mean, said differently, you're saying that the UF scheme is so bad....that even the Heisman favorite could not be effective in it. So what kind of QB would thrive in our O? Seems like your answer is no one?

 

So UT would be better than 1st in the country in offense and AR would be better than the Heisman favorite. Ok then. I guess that settles that.

I mean, said differently, you're saying that the UF scheme is so bad....that even the Heisman favorite could not be effective in it. So what kind of QB would thrive in our O? Seems like your answer is no one?[/QUOTE]

There are many QBs better than Hooker. This isn’t revolutionary. Quite a few QBs would be the Heisman favorite if they were at UT this year.

Re: Florida….It is a 1st year offense. I’m not sure what the final install will be so we can’t make final calls. But right now very few QBs (probably none) would be highly successful with our 2022 scheme. Hooker wouldn’t be. It’s an extremely tight window offense with minimal routes. Often throwing into 1 vs 2 windows between the numbers. Even harder is the QB does hard play action resulting in taking eyes off field, making picking up those 1v2 windows quite hard. Heupel excels at getting 2 v 1 out wide, HUGE windows.