Author Archives: Will Shelton

One of the conversations I’ve encountered most in these last few weeks is how we’ve become accustomed to bad news following good. We’re living a bit of it right now until Tony Vitello signs an extension. It’s not just that football has trended down over 13 years…it’s that none of those 13 seasons found a way to live on in our memories. It’s something we wrote about when the Butch Jones era looked like it was headed for the off-ramp after a 41-0 loss to Georgia in 2017: you can create a moment in any season, but ultimately the season itself has to be considered a success for that moment to last.

Tennessee’s baseball team created plenty of moments this year, including a walk-off grand slam that should be talked about by anyone following Tennessee baseball a decade from now. We haven’t been doing this long enough to know how true, “Any season that ends in Omaha is a good one,” is. It does make me think about what the basketball equivalent might be.

The way we perceive basketball is a funny thing. The Vols have advanced to the Sweet 16 six times since 2000 (28.5% of the tournaments played in that span), and five times since 2007 (35.7%). You’d like to see that number climb towards 50%, a number elite programs tend to hit. But the Vols have also had the misfortune of going 1-5 in those Sweet 16 games, losing three times as the higher seed. Those finishes, and their inability to reach a round that would automatically be defined as success, can leave a slightly sour aftertaste.

The one time the Vols did break through to the Elite Eight did come a couple years after the football program entered exile in 2010, and is probably my favorite team to write about as long as I’ve been doing this. That season will live forever, both in individual moments and the whole. But they had the misfortune on the calendar of being followed by the investigation into their head coach just five months later, and the termination of said coach at the end of the following season. Cuonzo Martin’s run to the Sweet 16 was followed by his exit within the month. Rick Barnes’ best team and most memorable win are slightly burdened by a 20-point loss to Auburn within 24 hours.

So even in a sport where things have gone overwhelmingly well in the last 15 years, with real and regular opportunities to make history, it feels like even the things we’ve truly celebrated never last quite long enough.

Still, the most valuable thing for Tennessee is the opportunity. The basketball team is going to be in the hunt. The football team used to be, even through 2007. The baseball team could be in the future.

In the midst of those opportunities, there will always be misses. There are plenty from 1989-2007 in football, and trust me, those hurt more too. Seasons with little-to-no-regrets – 1989, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2004 – are outnumbered by seasons with great wins and tough losses. That’s the nature of the beast. There are roller coaster years like 1990 or 2007 that ultimately ended in satisfaction. There are individual wins so great, like the turning-30 Miracle at South Bend, that define entire seasons. And there is disappointment, to be sure, when some of the best moments were followed by some of the hardest; the two Saturdays in December 2001 that defined much of the post-1998 Fulmer conversation turn 20 themselves this fall.

That’s the beauty of sports: it’s all opportunity. You’ll win and you’ll lose. We’ve grown accustomed to there not being enough distance between the one and the other. But the opportunities we want are there in basketball and, hopefully, baseball. And a new coach will get a chance to chase his own starting this fall.

So it looks like we’re going to 12, though there will be some weeping and gnashing of teeth over going higher than eight. (And some additional tears for quarterfinal rounds keeping bowls on life support instead of more games on campus.)

Tennessee, of course, is a long, long way from any playoff conversation. But perhaps one way to learn how you’d actually feel about 12 teams is to run it back through our happier days, to see what difference it might’ve made in our glory days. A big thanks to College Poll Archive for facilitating the fun.

If the field was 12 teams (Top 6 conference champions + Top 6 at-large, rankings using AP, BCS, and CFP polls), how often would the Vols have played for it all?

1989: In, first round game in Knoxville. Three-way-tie for the SEC title with the 11-1 Vols, Alabama, and Auburn, but at #8 in the final regular season AP poll, Tennessee is in either way.

1990: In. SEC Champions at the end of a very strange and wildly enjoyable 8-2-2 campaign.

1991: In. Here’s a good example of how a season might be remembered differently: the ’91 Vols are basically thought of as the Miracle at South Bend team, and that’s about it. But they would’ve squeaked into the playoffs at #10.

1992: Bubble until mid-November. The Johnny Majors-Phillip Fulmer drama would’ve included a fall from what felt like playoff certainty in early October to a hill too steep to climb after three straight losses. Still, another theme emerges for the first time here: even outside the Top 12, if you can win the SEC East, you get a chance to dramatically improve your fate in Atlanta. In 1992, the Vols were alive for Atlanta until mid-November, when Georgia beat Auburn and Florida escaped South Carolina.

1993: In, first round game in Knoxville. The ol’ “Best Vol squad of the 90s in SP+” would’ve not only made the field, but hosted a first round game at #6 in the final regular season AP poll. No season would’ve had its fate more drastically altered; this group would’ve gone to the playoff feeling like a legit national championship contender.

1994: Out

1995: In, first round game in Knoxville. Couldn’t earn a first round bye since the Gators won the SEC, but the #4 Vols are in easily.

1996: In. That Memphis loss stings a little less now eh?

1997: In, first round bye. No worries with Michigan and Nebraska both going undefeated.

1998: In, first round bye. Obviously.

1999: In, first round game in Knoxville. In the, “You made the regular season less meaningful!” camp: Tennessee’s 1999 loss to Arkansas took them out of the national championship picture. In a 12-team playoff, it would’ve cost them basically zero: the Vols were still #5 in the final regular season BCS standings.

2000: Out

2001: In, first round game in Knoxville. Tennessee’s loss to LSU in the SEC Championship Game moves from the most heartbreaking Saturday of our lives to, “Oh man, now we have to play an extra game.”

2002: Out

2003: In, first round game in Knoxville. Here’s another season that looks very different in a 12-team playoff. The Vols finished eighth in the final regular season BCS standings at 10-2, got hosed into the Peach Bowl, then tried to fight Clemson for an hour and lost thanks to 134521087 penalties. But in a 12-team playoff, not only is Casey Clausen’s final team in, they’re hosting.

2004: Bubble until Atlanta. The Vols finished 15th in the BCS after losing to undefeated Auburn in Atlanta, but that’s obviously a win-and-you’re-in scenario.

2005: Out

2006: Bubble until mid-November. Instead of the loss to LSU being the one that cost the Vols, it would’ve been the next one at Arkansas that took Tennessee out.

2007: Bubble until Atlanta. Same as 2004, win in Atlanta and you’re in.

The Vols, of course, would’ve been out from 2008-2015. Even that 2015 squad, who played so many great teams so close, was too far behind to catch up. The 2016 squad would’ve been on the bubble until mid-November, when Florida’s win over LSU knocked the Vols out of Atlanta. Then back to spectating from 2017 to the present day.

So pros: the Vols are in 11 times in 15 years from 1989-2003. They only earn first-round byes in 1997 and 1998 thanks to Steve Spurrier, but do host a first round game six times. And they’re technically in the national championship conversation deep into 2004 and 2007, years that otherwise could only shoot for the division title by then.

And cons: those division titles end up meaning pretty much nothing, though much of that is because of who Tennessee was as a program by that point. Instead of 2004 and 2007 feeling like a disappointment, Tennessee just misses the playoffs in 2004, 2006, and 2007 after making it 11 of 15 times prior. That, of course, is the same hot seat for Phillip Fulmer in 2008; mileage will always vary, but I’m not sure this new scenario will automatically lead to more job security for everyone.

Asking if this scenario increases or diminishes Tennessee’s legacy would be entirely dependent on what those Vols did in those hypothetical playoffs. But I think it’s safe to say it can keep all kinds of teams in the conversation for much longer…and it can diminish all other accomplishments.

The best news for Tennessee coming into what will be a landscape-shifting moment for how we define success in college football: we haven’t had much by any definition in 14 years. So while this kind of shift may not automatically make life any easier for someone like Kirby Smart, any kind of success – stealing an SEC East title, just hanging around the conversation, or being one of those teams that makes someone say, “You know, we used to have better teams here in the Outback Bowl…”…it’s all forward progress from here.

I’ve already watched more Tennessee baseball this year than I have since at least 2005, and maybe 2001. And we haven’t even gotten to the part of the year that a percentage of fans will only tune in for, the old “bad Lady Vol fan” demographic I used to be part of too: if you know they’re going to be in the tournament and should make a deep run, how much attention do you really pay before March? Or June?

The baseball Vols are packing out Lindsey Nelson with post-pandemic glee. But I would imagine no one is enjoying it more than those fans, however many or however few, who have followed the program closely in the 16 years since we last had a shot at Omaha.

It’s an absence a couple years longer than the football program’s from the national conversation, in an SEC sport just as tough, if not more so, to rise in. What Tony Vitello and those guys are doing is truly amazing.

Meanwhile, in football it’s still easier to measure the distance to the bottom than the top:

In the very early spreads Alabama is favored by 15 at Florida. And Tennessee is a dog of 15.5 at Florida.

Not convinced those hold, but the implied Tennessee at Alabama spread is ~ Tide -34. Sheesh.

— Bud Elliott (@BudElliott3) May 19, 2021

The “sheesh” is actually worth appreciating in terms of Tennessee’s brand, I suppose. The perception that this is, in fact, the worst it’s ever been for a program of UT’s historical caliber is, in fact, stronger than the reality of where the program’s actually been.

If you’re graduating from UT this month, grew up in the area, and are a lifelong fan…what do you actually remember?

It’s not just that a 21-year-old wasn’t alive in 1998. Do they remember 2007, when they were seven years old? Because since then…

And sometimes in the since then, we say, “Well, at least there were a few good times in 2015 and 2016.” That’s true, including circumstances from 2016 that may never be reproduced in any of our lifetimes between Bristol, 38 unanswered points on Florida, and the hail mary.

But not only did the Vols fail to win the SEC East those two years and fail to ascend any further, they’ve regressed. In SP+, three of Tennessee’s worst four seasons in the last 15 years are 2017, 2018, and 2020.

The other one in that group is 2013, the kind of suffering a first year coach in the SEC might expect. Maybe something similar will happen to Josh Heupel this fall, or maybe the Vols will take advantage of a softer schedule and make the most of it. Maybe it’ll get worse, maybe it’ll get better.

But being +34 at Alabama isn’t a sign of new depths. It’s a reflection of what’s been Tennessee’s reality for long enough to be named and accepted, which, again, is usually the best way to start moving forward.

Via covers.com, here are the biggest closing lines the Vols have faced in the post-Fulmer era:

Year	Opponent	Line
2017	Alabama	36.5
2019	Alabama	34.5
2018	Georgia	30.5
2009	Florida	30
2018	Alabama	29.5
2011	Alabama	29
2013	Oregon	28
2013	Alabama	28
2019	Georgia	24
2020	Alabama	21.5
2014	Alabama	20

Seven of those 11 belong, of course, to the Crimson Tide. Six of those 11 belong to the last four years.

At this point, it’s not new that Tennessee is a 4+ possession underdog to Alabama or Georgia. Whatever the Vols accomplished in years three and four under Butch Jones, his fifth season and Jeremy Pruitt’s tenure and removal set the most relevant circumstances Josh Heupel inherits.

So yeah: embrace the moment. This is who the Vols are right now. It’s not just letting go of the 90s or stretching everything back to 2008, it’s acknowledging the depths of the last four years in particular. The Vols are significant underdogs. At this point, the best way forward is to embrace that more than lamenting its relationship to what Tennessee used to be. It’s not that those days are so long ago as much as the days that have been most recent these last four seasons have been most bad.

Embrace the moment.

It’ll always be the best way to appreciate the climb.

When Tennessee went 1-for-11 on third down in the season opener but beat South Carolina anyway, we laughed it off. Fun anomaly! Let’s move on! And the Vols did, going 6-of-13 against Missouri the following week.

As you’ll recall, not much else went right from there. And as far as Tennessee’s offense was concerned, the opening performance at South Carolina was a red flag after all. In 2020, the Vol offense went 39-of-129 (30.23%) on third down, 119th in college football. It was the thing Tennessee’s offense was worst at.

There’s little differentiation between run, pass, short yardage, and long yardage. The Vols simply struggled everywhere on third down last season.

In the past, this kind of extreme struggle on third down was usually attributed to a quarterback injury. In the post-Fulmer era, the Vols have converted on less than 35% of their third down attempts in conference play four times in 12 years (stats via SportSource Analytics). Two of those came in 2011 and 2013. When Tyler Bray got hurt against Georgia and Derek Dooley burned Justin Worley’s redshirt two games later, the Vols went 2-of-14 against Alabama, 2-of-14 against South Carolina, and 4-of-18 at Arkansas. Two years later when it was Worley who went down with injury, Josh Dobbs was thrown to the fire and went 3-of-12 against Alabama, 2-of-13 at Missouri, and 4-of-13 against both Auburn and Vanderbilt. In both of those cases, playing great opponents (and maybe James Franklin’s best Vanderbilt team) were a big part of the problem.

In 2017, the offense showed signs of third down life early even as the defense was decimated by Georgia Tech: 5-of-12 against the Yellow Jackets, 7-of-13 against Indiana State, 6-of-16 at Florida, 7-of-18 against UMass. We all know how this year ended; the problem here wasn’t converting on third downs, but needing 18 of them against UMass. Still, the Vols were 25-of-59 (42.4%) on third down going into the Georgia game. From there, disaster: 1-of-12 against the Dawgs, 3-of-13 against South Carolina, 1-of-12 again at Bama, plus an agonizing 2-of-13 against Southern Miss. Absolutely nothing worked for this team or its offense in the second half of the year.

But last year the Vols were quite bad throughout, with the exception of Missouri early and Auburn (9-of-15) late. Take a look at the rest of the damage:

Opponent	Cnv	Att	Pct.
South Carolina	1	11	9.09%
Missouri	6	13	46.15%
at Georgia	4	17	23.53%
Kentucky	3	12	25%
Alabama	4	16	25%
at Arkansas	5	15	33%
at Auburn	9	15	60%
Florida	4	15	26.67%
at Vanderbilt	2	9	22.22%
Texas A&M	1	6	16.67%

Gross.

(One interesting note I found that I’m not sure where to put: Harrison Bailey on first down last year went 24-of-26 for 345 yards (13.3 ypa) and three touchdowns. He had the second highest QB rating on first down in the nation.)

In good news: Central Florida has been pretty good at this.

UCF finished 11th nationally last fall at 48.75%, 61st in 2019 at 40.5%, and fifth in 2018 at 50.29%. They’ve won with and without high third down conversion rates, which probably speaks more to their defense than anything else, especially last season. But the idea that Josh Heupel’s offense is big plays or three-and-outs only isn’t the case: this group has been really efficient on third downs.

Also of note: Missouri finished 20th nationally in third down conversions in 2017, and 42nd in 2016. Heupel’s first Tigers struggled in October – 4-of-14 at LSU, 4-of-15 at Florida, 4-of-15 against Kentucky – but had it rolling by November, as Tennessee’s 2016 defense will attest to (11-of-20 against the Vols).

The best way to avoid struggling on third down remains, of course, to avoid struggling on first and second down. In this way, Heupel’s offense is also more than simply big plays: 30% of UCF’s third downs last year required only 1-3 yards to gain for the first down. For the Vols, only 26.5% of their third downs required 1-3 yards to gain, the same number of snaps they took requiring 4-6 yards to gain. One additional note here: Central Florida actually had a higher percentage of 3rd-and-10+ than the Vols did last year (23.75% to 22.8%) despite having a much better offense overall; my assumption here is they were far more likely to throw two incomplete passes on first and second down and face a 3rd-and-10.

For Tennessee, again, it can’t really get worse. But I’m curious to see how much efficiency shows up with this offense in year one, on top of the explosiveness we all know is out there. Will the Vols find themselves in a ton of 3rd-and-10s? Or will this new offense find its way to more success not just through trying to hit home runs, but giving themselves to advance on third-and-manageable?

More in the Making Progress series:

Completion Percentage Allowed

Every offseason, we run a series on where Tennessee can make the most improvement. It’s a good way to examine how the Vols might get better, fastest. And for all the pendulum swing of Jeremy Pruitt to Josh Heupel, the place Tennessee has the most room for improvement from last year is on the defensive side of the ball.

A million years ago, #3 Tennessee played #2 Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. It was Peyton Manning’s final game, and even though a win by #1 Michigan in the Rose Bowl the day before had eliminated the Vols from the national title picture, there was still hope an elite 1997 Vol squad could end the season with a huge win over the Cornhuskers. Instead, those Vols succumbed to the Thanos-like inevitability of Nebraska’s triple option: 68 carries for 409 yards, a 14-3 halftime hole quickly becoming a 42-17 beat down. In the third quarter, Nebraska had three touchdown drives of 70+ yards that I’m not sure included any passing plays.

If they had, it would’ve been Scott Frost pulling the trigger. A lifetime later, Frost left Central Florida to return to the alma mater, paving the way for Josh Heupel to get his first head coaching gig and come to Knoxville three years later. College football has changed quite a bit from 1997 to 2021. But the inevitability of another team coming down the field on us was all too familiar last fall.

In 2020, Tennessee’s defense allowed opposing quarterbacks to complete 68.2% of their passes, 125th of 127 teams playing last fall. This is where the Vols have the most room for improvement in 2021.

As the game has evolved, completion percentage is slightly on the rise around the country. In conference play, the national median completion percentage was between 58-59% from 2013-17. The last three years, it’s climbed to 59.4%, 60.6%, and 61.4% last fall. (Stats via SportSource Analytics)

Tennessee’s struggle in this department, somewhat surprisingly, can be traced directly to Pruitt’s defenses. Between Phillip Fulmer’s exit in 2008 and Jeremy Pruitt’s arrival in 2018, Vol defenses allowed opposing quarterbacks to complete 60+ percent of their passes in just two seasons: a depth-depleted group in 2011 (60.9%), and Sal Sunseri’s infamous unit the following year (65.3%). Tennessee was actually pretty good in this department under John Jancek, finishing 15th nationally in completion percentage allowed in conference play in 2014, and ninth in 2015.

But the last three years, Tennessee’s defense has struggled mightily to disrupt opposing passing games: 67.5% allowed in 2018, 61.9% in 2019, and 68.2% last year (again, all numbers in conference play for the apples-to-apples comparison with last fall).

In the last 12 seasons, opposing quarterbacks completed 70+% of their passes against the Vol defense on at least 25 attempts 13 times. Four of those 13 happened last season, and the three highest completion percentages allowed all happened in the last two seasons:

Year	Opponent	Primary QB	CMP	ATT	PCT
2019	Georgia	Jake Fromm	24	29	82.8%
2020	Texas A&M	Kellen Mond	26	32	81.3%
2020	Alabama	Mac Jones	28	36	77.8%
2015	Alabama	Jake Coker	21	27	77.8%
2013	Vanderbilt	ACS/Robinette	24	31	77.4%
2012	Georgia	Aaron Murray	20	26	76.9%
2018	West Virginia	Will Grier	25	34	73.5%
2020	Arkansas	Felipe Franks	18	25	72.0%
2020	Florida	Kyle Trask	35	49	71.4%
2016	Virginia Tech	Jerod Evans	20	28	71.4%
2013	Oregon	Marcus Mariota	25	35	71.4%
2019	Florida	Kyle Trask	24	34	70.6%
2018	Missouri	Drew Lock	21	30	70.0%

No matter how good Tennessee’s offense could’ve been or would’ve been if the quarterback position had been settled, and no matter how good the Vol defense could be against the run – 27th nationally in yards per carry allowed in conference play! – when teams can routinely drop back and get whatever they want through the air, there is indeed an inevitability to the end result. On third-and-short (1-3 yards) last season, the Vol defense allowed 16-of-18 (88.9%) for 13 first downs through the air. On third-and-medium (4-6 yards), it was 17-of-25 (68%) for 16 first downs.

Tennessee obviously needs to impact the opponent passing game in far greater ways. But the Vols were actually fairly average in getting to the quarterback: 20 sacks over 10 conference games, 67th nationally in sacks per game. Texas A&M is the only game where the defense failed to record a single sack, and they got Felipe Franks four times, despite his 72% completion percentage. So while the Vols can certainly aspire to be more than average in getting the QB, it’s not where the most improvement can be done.

The inevitability of last season certainly felt worst watching teams run routes over the middle of the field. And this is where the struggle may still be quite real, as the Vols are scrambling at linebacker on the depth chart. But whether third-and-short or third-and-medium, you could get what you wanted far more often than not against Tennessee’s coverage last fall. Tim Banks and the Vols will need to scheme it better than Pruitt’s defenses did for three years to improve completion percentage rates. But they’ll also need bodies to run those schemes; it’s a big opportunity and a big task for whoever can get healthy, learn the system, and translate it to something productive in disrupting the passing game.

The good news is, this is where the most improvement can be made. And for fan and team morale, anything better than the inevitability of a completed pass is going to look and feel very much like progress.