Butch Jones probably isn’t getting fired this year, even if Saturday’s 26-20, last-second loss to Florida in Gainesville exhausted what little goodwill the Tennessee fan base had left with its fifth-year head coach.
Tennessee probably isn’t firing Butch Jones, despite Florida’s Hail Mary and all
His losses are maddening, but the overall program is strengthening.
Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images
The assumption around the program and boosters is that Tennessee would need to finish with a losing record for new athletic director John Currie to consider making a move in this coaching cycle.
A coaching change isn’t something the Vol fan should want, based only on the big picture ...
1. As Bud Elliott mentioned this week, the recruiting is really great right now. The Vols are 15th in Bud’s Blue-Chip Ratio rankings, and 247Sports has their current 2018 class at sixth nationally and first in the SEC.
2. The overall roster is inarguably better than before Jones arrived. The gross inefficiencies of the Derek Dooley era can’t be overemphasized; for instance, his last signing class had no offensive linemen. Under Jones, these deficiencies have been corrected.
3. Forcing Currie to make a change less than a year into his arrival might not be wise. The landscape around Tennessee’s donors and fans has been fractured since the end of the Phil Fulmer era. Moves like this week’s renewal of the Lady Vols branding are the start of a long process by Currie to build back goodwill.
So if you’re a UT fan and you can’t stand Butch Jones anymore, you’re probably best off waiting out a likely six-to-nine-win season (it’s the SEC East; who knows?) and a potentially stellar recruiting class. You might not get a division title in the milquetoast SEC East, again, and ending Alabama’s decade streak is uh ... nah, not in 2017.
... but it’s still easy to understand why any Vols fan would want rid of Jones.
When you boil down Butch Jones’ run in Knoxville, it’s almost impossible to argue for his immediate firing, but it’s hard to want to hug that flat top. The nature of his wins and losses have made it impossible for diehard Vols to fall in love with him. In 2015, double-digit leads vs. Florida and Oklahoma disappeared in what could’ve been defining moments. Even Jones’ biggest 2016 wins were earned amid extreme fan angst; last year’s Florida win was a frantic come-from-behind in the second half, and Georgia had thrown its own miracle TD pass just before the Vols’ Hail Mary.
In Year 5, a six-point loss to Florida should be cushioned by more than just one Jones win over Florida. At this point, Butch should be using up some of the equity he never earned. It’d be nice if he had a division title from the Josh Dobbs run to lean on right now.
(Then again, it’s a six-point loss in which Tennessee did this on a goal-to-go drive. Maybe it’s still OK for Vol fans to act crazy.)
Tennessee never found its footing after a legendary, national title-winning coach was replaced with one spastic year of Lane Kiffin.
But not much is going to change in the immediate future for Tennessee. That’s almost certainly a good thing for a program that’s improving, but increasingly hard for its fans to love.
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