Author Archives: Joel Hollingsworth

Right now, somebody somewhere on Rocky Top is writing an obituary or, if they’re feeling especially kind, a eulogy for the 2017 Tennessee Volunteer football season. It seems appropriate, as the Vols have just concluded their first eight-loss season in the history of the program by losing to Vanderbilt, 42-24. Tennessee is winless in the SEC this season, and they’ve now lost to the Commodores four out of the last six years.

Yes, employing a death metaphor to describe the end of the season is quite tempting. But I’m going to go with something a little less drastic and final. I’m putting them to bed.

The 2017 season has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and this last chapter today was just more of the same.

Although the Tennessee offense looked good early, scoring two touchdowns on its first two drives, things fell apart from there. Vanderbilt was the worst rushing defense the Vols had seen all year, and Tennessee managed only 55 rushing yards against them. They were also the worst rushing offense the Vols had seen all year, and the Commodores rolled up 246 on them.

And Tennessee posted a mere 24 points against the worst scoring defense they’d faced all year.

It’s no wonder. About half the Vols’ roster was missing. They’d already fired their coach. They were down to their last five scholarship offensive linemen, and Jarrett Guarantano paid the price all night.

It was an awful nightcap to an awful season, and I absolutely hate it for the players who gave their all this year and got next to nothing in return.

So, I’m not putting any of those guys in the grave, even metaphorically.

But it is time to call it a day and hit the sack. Time to close our blinds and shut our eyes and turn off our minds so that we can tackle a new tomorrow with a new leader and a renewed mind. It is still beautiful here, even at sunset of a rotten day.

And may we all dream of a better, brighter tomorrow.

Go Vols.

The Tennessee Volunteers lay the 2017 football season to rest this afternoon with a game against the Vanderbilt Commodores. The game kicks off at 4:00 p.m. and will be televised on the SEC Network. It should be a good game, with each team looking for its first conference win of the season in its last chance.

Go Vols.

• Kickoff: Nov. 25, 4 p.m. ET
• TV: SEC Network
• Watch online
• Listen online
• Live stats

Among much bad news for the 2017 Tennessee Volunteer football team, there is at least this bit of good news: For its last game of the season, Tennessee will be playing against the worst rushing offense, the worst rushing defense, and the worst scoring defense it has seen all season.

Tennessee rushing

Tennessee is averaging 123.1 rushing yards per game, while Vanderbilt is giving up 211.5 per game, which makes them the worst rushing defense the Vols will have faced the entire season. The closest comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent that is better at defending the run than Vanderbilt is Massachusetts, which is allowing 181.5. Tennessee got 135 on the ground against them. Based on all of that, my guess for rushing yards for Tennessee against Vanderbilt is 170.

Vanderbilt rushing

The Tennessee defense is allowing 251.7 rushing yards per game, while the Vanderbilt run game is averaging 94.5 yards per game. That also makes Vandy the worst rushing offense Tennessee has seen all season. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is South Carolina, which is averaging 131.5 rushing yards per game and got 194 against Tennessee. I’m guessing Vanderbilt will get about 140 rushing yards against Tennessee’s defense.

Tennessee passing

Tennessee is averaging 172.8 passing yards per game, and Vanderbilt is allowing 195.6. The closest “not-as-good” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Georgia Tech, which is giving up 198.3 yards per game through the air, and Tennessee, in another life, put up 221 against them. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is LSU. They’re allowing 181.5 passing yards per game, and Tennessee got 249 against them. My guess is that Tennessee will put up 200 passing yards this weekend.

Vanderbilt passing

The Tennessee pass defense is allowing 150.6 passing yards per game. Vanderbilt is getting 240.0. The closest “not-as-good” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is South Carolina, which is getting 220.8 yards per game through the air, and they got 129 against Tennessee. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Southern Mississippi, which is averaging 256.5 passing yards per game and got 161 against Tennessee. I’m going with Vanderbilt putting up about 150 passing yards against Tennessee.

Tennessee scoring

Tennessee is averaging 19.5 points per game, and Vanderbilt is allowing 32.0, which makes them the worst scoring defense the Vols have seen this year. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Missouri. They’re allowing 30.5 points per game, and Tennessee got 17 against them. My prediction is that Tennessee will score around 24 points against Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt scoring

Tennessee is allowing 27.9 points per game. Vanderbilt is averaging 23.0. The closest “not-as-good” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is Florida, which is averaging 22.1 points, and they got 26 against Tennessee. The closest “better-than” comparison for a prior Tennessee opponent is South Carolina, which is averaging 25.4 points and got 15 against Tennessee. I’m going with Vanderbilt putting up about 21 points against Tennessee.

SUMMARY

• Tennessee rushing yards: 170
• Vanderbilt rushing yards: 140
• Tennessee passing yards: 200
• Vanderbilt passing yards: 150
• Tennessee points: 24
• Vanderbilt points: 21

Those are my eyeball-adjusted predictions. For the record, the SPM itself is spitting out Tennessee 24.3, Vanderbilt 19.8.

Current betting lines and other statistical models

The SPM mostly agrees with Vegas all the way around this week, as the spread opened at Tennessee -1, with an over/under of 45.5. That makes it look like Tennessee, 23-22 or so.

ESPN’s FPI gives the Vols a 69% chance of beating Vandy. S&P+ likes Vandy, but only with a gun pointed to its head, as the Vols have a 49% chance of winning. They project the score to be Vandy, 25.5-25.

So, the FPI, the SPM, and Vegas all like the Vols in a close one, and S&P+ is quibbling over decimals.

Last Week

Here’s how the statsy preview machine did for the game between Tennessee and LSU last week.

• Tennessee rushing yards: 110 (actually 38)
• LSU rushing yards: 300 (actually 200)
• Tennessee passing yards: 110 (actually 249)
• LSU passing yards: 200 (actually 81)
• Tennessee points: 13 (actually 10)
• LSU points: 24 (actually 30)

Again, those were eyeball-adjusted numbers. The SPM itself said LSU 17.3, Tennessee 6.3.

Did the Statsy Preview Machine win in Vegas?

The line was LSU -14, and the SPM said they woulldn’t cover, so no, the SPM lost this game against the spread. Overall, though, the SPM went 37-21 (63.79%) against the spread for the week. Over the six weeks we’ve been testing it, it’s gone 67.92%, 53.06%, 54.55%, 55.93%, 46.43%, and 63.79%, for an overall rate of 56.97%. It doesn’t understand the 2017 Tennessee Volunteer football team.

There are so many things wrong with the Jauan Jennings news that I don’t even know where to start. In case you haven’t heard yet, the news is this: Jennings posted an R-rated (for language) video to Instagram, the sanitized gist of which was that Tennessee’s coaches were liars, and he was going home. Shortly thereafter, interim head coach Brady Hoke announced that Jennings had been dismissed from the team.

First, if you are late to the party, you might have some trouble appreciating the full context of what happened. I saw the video last night. It was a video recording of a phone that was playing the video, but after searching for about 15 minutes this morning, I can no longer find Jenning’s original video. This one from Sports Illustrated is the closest to the original that I’ve found, but it silences out all of the profanity and is incomplete to boot. A sanitized version relating that Jennings called the coaches names doesn’t really give you the full picture. If you’re going to have an opinion, you should find the full video and watch it (alone if you have kids and care about that stuff). He essentially flipped the entire coaching staff an especially angry double bird right to their faces.

But here’s something I don’t think anyone else is talking about yet. Jennings’ Instagram account is apparently private. Sure, he should have known that “private” doesn’t really mean “private” anymore, and he should have expected it to get out, but whatever media source ignored that fact and recorded their own video of the private video for the purpose of making it news probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Some non-media fan probably would have done the same thing at some point (and maybe it even started that way), and it almost certainly would have made the rounds on social media anyway, but do we really want to make public the things college athletes set up as private? This is not a criticism of all of the media reporting the news now that it’s out; it’s questioning the person who, unable to share or embed the video the usual way because of the privacy settings, decided to get around that by recording a video of Jennings’ video and making it news. And if Jennings intentionally allowed known media members into his circle of people entitled to see his private posts, well, then it’s his own fault, because then he essentially said those things right to the media. Regardless, we’re probably talking about this eventually no matter what, but I really don’t like the idea of sharing the actual video publicly unless public sharing was enabled.

Third, I was as shocked as everyone else that the school’s response was to dismiss Jennings from the team. How can an interim coach who’s only technically in charge for one more game of a dying season have the authority to make such a quick and drastic decision impacting the future of the program? It does certainly seem that the most cautious and prudent way out of the mess would have been to instead suspend Jennings indefinitely and wait for the program to settle.

I do think that that is true, but I also feel the need to clarify the narrative a bit. The shorthand for the story is that the interim coach dismissed a star player. That’s partially true but also incomplete. Brady Hoke probably doesn’t actually have the authority to make that call by himself, and he says that he didn’t. Athletic director John Currie was involved as well.

So, Currie probably had the actual authority and the final say. But why such a quick decision under the unique circumstances? Currie showed great patience in making the decision to fire Butch Jones, so why such a quick trigger here? So Jennings has some negative feelings about the coaching staff. Isn’t this the same staff that Currie felt so bad about that he fired them? (Yes, I know only Jones is actually gone right now. But most of the rest are going as well.)

Sure, Jennings didn’t express his message very well at all and shouldn’t have done it on social media, and maybe Currie felt that there was just no going back after that. You can’t stick the double birds in your employer’s face and just expect to go back to your desk when you feel like it. I’d bet that most acting head coaches would have dismissed an active player who did the same thing. It’s not irrational to believe that a player who has done that will never be able to play for the staff he so disrespected again.

But that’s the thing, none of these players are ever going to play for this staff again, not at Tennessee. He criticized, in his own unique way, the outgoing coaching staff, not the one he was playing for. So why not leave the question to the next coach?

Maybe Currie already knows who he’s going to hire. Maybe he consulted privately with that guy or knows what that guy’s decision on Jennings would be, and maybe he wanted to save him the trouble of having to burn some goodwill early by making that hard decision himself.

I don’t know. You don’t know. The whole thing is a terrible mess.

What’s worse, this should have been a time to push the reset button on the program, to purge most of the angst boiling over in the fan base. Who doesn’t love an interim coach? If he wins, cool. If he loses, it’s on the prior coach. And the athletic director had curried some favor with the fan base for making a move on Jones and had been positioned to make them very, very happy with the next hire.

But suddenly, things have soured again. It’s rare that an interim feels the heat of an angry fan base, but Hoke seems to have accomplished that, and Currie has just done considerable damage to any confidence the fan base may have had in him.

We don’t know all of the details. Perhaps Hoke and Currie actually made the right decision based on information that they have but we don’t.

Everything can be fixed by the right hire.

But people are nervous, and this didn’t help.