Author Archives: Will Shelton

If I asked you to define the off-season in one word or phrase, what would you say about the last 11 years?

2009: Swagger

Once upon a time, Lane Kiffin might have been the most anticipated act at SEC Media Days. The Vols were 5-7 the year before, but the new coach turned the volume all the way up. It wasn’t just on a dozen Saturdays in the fall; Kiffin, more than anyone, made the off-season fly by because he essentially took it away. There were no off days for Tennessee fans.

2010: Not Kiffin

And in his absence the next year, things were still really about him. Even though there was less preseason excitement for what the 2010 Vols could do on the field than just about any team in my lifetime at that point, we rallied around the new coach because he wasn’t the old coach, even if the new coach went 4-8 at Louisiana Tech the year before. Derek Dooley never made you set a couch on fire.

2011: BRAY

The Vols built their own anticipation in 2011 behind Tyler Bray’s arrival in November 2010, a 6-7 team that should’ve finished 8-5. It paid off for exactly one Saturday, a 45-23 thrashing of Butch Jones and Cincinnati. And then it got hurt. By the time the Vols amassed enough firepower to compete on the highest levels in 2012, Dooley had lost to LSU, Alabama, and Arkansas by 104 combined points and lost to Kentucky for the first time since 1984.

2012: Pressure

The 2012 Vols felt both exciting and desperate this time seven years ago. Excitement won out against NC State in the opener. Desperation was undefeated from there.

2013: Recruiting

2014: Freshmen

For Butch Jones, it seemed like his first season would generate even less interest than anything since the early 1980’s, the last time the Vols were in a funk like this. But he recruited his way out of it, forging a belief he could get Tennessee back even as the Vols went 5-7 in 2013. You got to see some of that talent in 2014, with another superb class coming in behind it. The Vols almost squandered all that excitement with a loss to Florida in the middle of a brutal schedule, but Josh Dobbs won it back in November.

2015: Are we back?

2016: We’re back!

Then we thought 2015 might be the year, and it almost was. Then we were sure 2016 would be – the only off-season with the kind of hype we were once accustomed to since Fulmer left the sideline – and it almost was. And then it really wasn’t.

2017: Last Year

And then we made enough noise talking about that to get us through the following off-season to 2017.

2018: The opposite of drama

Last year, then, after all the coaching search fiasco, was the quietest year one yet. From Dooley to Butch to Pruitt, we got another peg further from the good ol’ days, which makes it harder to believe in the next new guy. But it was still year one, and Fulmer was back in the picture. There was at least some curiosity, then two ranked wins, but six four-possession losses, and another 5-7.

2019: Quiet

Throw in one of the most talked-about basketball seasons in school history, and here we are: less than six weeks from kickoff, and all is quiet in Big Orange Country. It was quiet in Hoover too: no Vol made first, second, or third team All-SEC in the starting 22.

Now a dozen years removed from ten wins and a division title, the T on the helmet no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. These Vols, and their coach, will have to prove not just some of it, but all of it.

This fall will be my 14th season writing about the Vols, and I’m at 30+ years of going to the games. And as I type, 40 days from kickoff, this off-season carries less anticipation than any I can remember.

But I’m not convinced the quiet is a bad thing.

Since Fulmer left, how long have you felt good about things?

• The second half of 2009
• November 2010
• The first two weeks in 2011
• The first two weeks in 2012
• One game in 2013
• November 2014
• The second half of 2015
• The first half of 2016
• The first week in 2017
• Two games in 2018

The 2019 Vols don’t have to go undefeated to provide the kind of optimism that would rank quite high on that list. Can they provide a spark? Can they provide and then sustain hope? Does Pruitt have a Year Two jump in him?

The head coach has to prove himself. The same is true for this entire roster. It’s been a long time since we’ve been surprised. But surprises land best when it’s quiet.

Later today when the preseason All-SEC teams are announced, I don’t expect to see Jarrett Guarantano’s name. Tua Tagovailoa had one of the most impressive statistical seasons we’ve ever seen last year. Jake Fromm’s team is 24-5 the last two years, and he had a 30-6 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Kellen Mond seems to be in line for a huge year at Texas A&M, Kelly Bryant brings excitement from Clemson to Missouri, and there are other returning names – Joe Burrow, Jake Bentley, Felepie Franks – whose teams were more successful than Tennessee last season.

But Guarantano is not only Tennessee’s clear answer at quarterback; he’s quickly becoming the face of the program, as many at SEC Media Days have pointed out. And all of that comes with an underlying assumption: with Jim Chaney and a can’t-be-worse offensive line, this will be Guarantano’s best season yet.

That would be a pretty good result, considering in a couple of areas Guarantano is already one of the best Tennessee quarterbacks of the last 30 years.

After the win over Kentucky last season, Guarantano’s completion percentage was over 65%. He was on pace for the best season in that department since Erik Ainge completed two-thirds of his passes in 2006. But then he was knocked out of the Missouri game at 0-for-2, and went 13-of-29 at Vanderbilt to finish the season at 62.2%.

Still, for his career Guarantano trails only his secret weapon ($) in completion percentage:

Manning	62.5%
Guarantano	62.1%
Shuler	61.6%
Dobbs	61.5%
Clausen	61.0%
Kelly	60.8%
Ainge	60.6%
Worley	59.0%
Bray	58.6%
Martin	55.4%
Crompton	55.3%

(stats via Sports Reference)

Daryl Dickey is Tennessee’s overall career leader in completion percentage at 63%, but attempted only 162 passes in his career, stepping in for the injured Tony Robinson in 1985. For multi-year starters, it’s Manning, then Guarantano.

With Guarantano’s 2018 season ending on a sour note, he really arrived at this percentage without the kind of easily-recognizable great year most of these other quarterbacks had. Here’s the best single season in completion percentage for Tennessee’s multi-year starters:

Erik Ainge	2006	67.0%
Heath Shuler	1993	64.6%
Peyton Manning	1995	64.2%
Casey Clausen	2001	64.1%
Andy Kelly	1991	63.2%
Josh Dobbs	2016	63.0%
Jarrett Guarantano	2018	62.2%

And the other primary strength Guarantano already brings to the table: his accuracy includes not only completion percentage, but a lack of interceptions. Three last season, and only two in the second half of 2017. That’s five interceptions in 385 passing attempts, meaning Guarantano throws a pick on just 1.3% of his attempts. Here’s how that compares to his predecessors:

QB	ATT	INT	INT %
Guarantano	385	5	1.30%
Shuler	513	12	2.34%
Manning	1381	33	2.39%
Clausen	1270	31	2.44%
Martin	588	16	2.72%
Ainge	1210	35	2.89%
Dobbs	999	29	2.90%
Bray	922	28	3.04%
Crompton	629	22	3.50%
Kelly	846	38	4.49%

Obviously, there’s more to playing quarterback than limiting incompletions and interceptions. Manning’s career highs for both came in his sophomore season, but he increased his yards per attempt from 7.8 to 8.7 to his junior year while his completion percentage dropped slightly. He also threw eight more interceptions (to be fair, that ridiculous 1995 season with four interceptions in 380 attempts was going to be hard to top). If your quarterback is good enough to take more chances downfield, some of those chances are going to go the other way.

As we’ve pointed out throughout the off-season, Tennessee ran fewer plays than any team in college football last season. If he stays healthy, Guarantano will get more than the 20.5 passing attempts per game he had in 2018. With that should come more risk. There’s no guarantee his interception percentage won’t go up and his completion percentage won’t go down.

But with all his targets returning, and many of them proven threats? With better protection? And in the hands of Jim Chaney? Everyone expects Guarantano to be better. And he’s already building on a remarkably accurate foundation.

I don’t know if he’ll earn an All-SEC mention by season’s end. But I do think if things go right for the Vols this fall, it will come through the unfolding realization that Tennessee has a very capable quarterback on its hands.

If the Vols do meet their rounded-up FPI projection and turn 7.6 wins into an 8-4 regular season, then take what would be a pretty solid bowl victory? There’s a good chance Jeremy Pruitt’s second squad would finish the season in the Top 25. A pair of 9-4 finishes got the Vols a #22 final ranking in 2015 and 2016.

One thing stood out when researching pre-and-postseason polls in the media guide: since 1970, the Vols have only gone from unranked in preseason to ranked at the end of the year twice: SEC Championships in 1985 and 1989.

Some of it is the extremes of Tennessee’s history. Both in the last decade and the period that most mirrors it in the early 1980’s, the Vols had plenty of opportunity: Tennessee went unranked in the preseason poll from 1976-1985, but only got there at the end of the season in that magical ’85 campaign. And the Vols went unranked in the preseason poll from 2009-2014, but never capitalized on any of those opportunities.

After the SugarVols season in ’85, Tennessee was ranked in the preseason AP poll every year from 1986-2008 except one: 1989, when the Vols followed a 5-6 campaign in 1988 with an 11-1 season and a top five finish.

In this sense, we really haven’t seen the kind of year Jeremy Pruitt has a chance to create this fall. We’ve seen unranked-to-top-five, and we’ve seen it the other way around. But a season of significant but not meteoric progress, where the Vols went from unranked to a finish in the back end of the poll? That would be new.

Think of it this way: when’s the last time a Tennessee team overachieved?

In relative terms, I’d probably go with Derek Dooley’s first team in 2010, which finished 6-7 but, as we know, had outcomes overturned against LSU and North Carolina. The narrative of that season, with Tyler Bray’s arrival in November and competitive losses to good teams from LSU and South Carolina, built hope in the immediate aftermath of burning couches. As we also know, that kind of season is no promise of the future; Dooley wasn’t the guy. But other than that year, I’m not sure any of the post-Fulmer teams have ended a year better than we thought they’d be at its beginning.

Fulmer himself pulled it off multiple times, and was also here long enough to experience his share of underachieving. If you’re looking at pre-to-postseason AP poll data, here are the most significant leaps and falls since Johnny Majors got the Vols back in the national picture in the 1980’s:

Leaps

• As mentioned, the Vols started the season unranked in 1985 but won the SEC at 8-1-2, then throttled #2 Miami in the Sugar Bowl to finish #4. In 1989, the Vols lost only to Alabama and went from unranked to #5.
• The Majors-to-Fulmer transition year in 1992 featured a gain of +10 in the final poll. Tennessee began the year at #22, moved to #8 after Fulmer-led wins over #20 Georgia and #14 Florida, and rose as high as #4 as Majors returned from heart surgery in October. Three straight losses by nine total points knocked the Vols back to #23 and essentially ended Majors’ time, but a big win over #16 Boston College in the Hall of Fame (now Outback) Bowl ended Tennessee’s year at #12.
• The National Championship season in 1998 started at #10 and finished, you know, at #1, for a gain of +9. The only national champions who started farther back in the BCS/CFP era (via Wikipedia): Oklahoma in 2000 (#19), Ohio State in 2002 (#13), LSU in 2003 (#14), Auburn in 2010 (#22), and Florida State in 2013 (#11).
• In 1995 and 2001, the Vols went from top ten to top five. Peyton Manning’s sophomore team went from #8 to #3 (and #2 in the coaches’ poll), and Casey Clausen’s 2001 squad went from #8 to #4. Both were legitimate national championship contenders.

Falls

• Like the leap from unranked-to-top-five, the Vols also went top-five-to-unranked twice. A beat-up 2002 squad started #4 but exited the poll after their fourth loss to a Top 20 foe via #1 Miami and never returned thanks to Maryland in the Peach Bowl. And in 2005 the Vols started #3 but a quarterback controversy and five top ten opponents spelled doom, with the Vols out of the poll by November.
• The biggest fall after those? Butch Jones’ infamous 2016 season, which looks even worse in this context. The Vols started at #9, dropped to #17 after a near-miss with Appalachian State, then worked their way back there after a 5-0 start. They stayed there after a double overtime loss to #8 Texas A&M. But it all went downhill from there. The win over #24 Nebraska in the Music City Bowl got them back in the final poll at #22, but a -13 drop is the worst for any Tennessee team that both started and finished the season ranked in the modern era.
• The combination of injured quarterback and obvious rebuilding year created drops that were based as much on Tennessee’s name brand in the preseason poll as anything else. In 1994 the Vols started #13 and finished #22. And in 2000 the Vols started #13 and finished #25.
• A pair of nowhere to go but down years: the Vols were #2 in preseason polls in 1996 and 1999, but finished #9 both years.
• Phillip Fulmer’s final team in 2008 started the year at #18 but finished unranked.

No one is expecting or asking for Jeremy Pruitt to take the 2019 Vols from unranked to an SEC Championship (except Colin Cowherd, apparently). But a tangible sense of major progress, winning a couple games above your preseason expectation and living into the optimism this fanbase would eat up? I’m not sure we’ve ever had a year like that in my lifetime.

And man, it would be a lot of fun.

If you want a glimpse of what the Vols hope to look like in a couple years, wide receiver and linebacker are the best place to look: proven multi-year starters with NFL potential, and elite incoming freshmen who might play but don’t have to be the answer. Tennessee’s two highest-rated recruits in 2019 don’t fall into the latter category, as you’ll be seeing plenty of Wanya Morris and Darnell Wright right away on the offensive line. But after them, the next three highest-rated signees can learn from proven answers on the depth chart: Henry To’oto’o and Quavaris Couch at linebacker, and Ramel Keyton at wide receiver.

It makes sense to find Tennessee’s wide receivers and linebackers among the highest-rated units nationally. Phil Steele lists the Vol receivers as the 13th best group in the nation, and the linebackers 12th. But Tennessee’s highest-rated position group in his magazine is…special teams?

The Vol specialists are 10th in his preseason unit rankings. Some of this is bringing all the pieces back in Brent Cimaglia, Joe Doyle, Marquez Callaway and Ty Chandler. But a couple of those pieces were quietly impressive last season.

When you’re trying to rebuild, special teams can make a big difference in close games. But the Vols were so far behind last season, there really wasn’t much opportunity for special teams to matter. In fact, one of Cimaglia’s few misses last season came in the Auburn game.

If you lose six games by at least four possessions, special teams can’t help you. But if the Vols improve enough to find themselves in more competitive games this fall? Tennessee’s experience and expertise in the third phase can be the difference in winning and losing (see 2009 Alabama, 2013 South Carolina, etc.).

Last season doesn’t offer much context for special teams, but the rest of Tennessee’s decade does. Check out Cimaglia’s performance compared to other Vol kickers in the post-Fulmer era:

Year	Kicker	Made	Att	Pct
2010	Lincoln	10	11	90.91%
2013	Palardy	14	17	82.35%
2018	Cimaglia	10	13	76.92%
2014	Medley	20	26	76.92%
2012	Palardy	9	12	75.00%
2016	Medley	11	16	68.75%
2015	Medley	21	31	67.74%
2011	Palardy	9	14	64.29%
2009	Lincoln	10	16	62.50%
2017	Cimaglia	8	13	61.54%

Or how about Marquez Callaway returning punts?

Year	Punt Returner	Avg	TD
2015	Sutton	18.28	2
2018	Callaway	11.86	1
2011	D. Young	11.75	0
2014	Sutton	11.29	1
2009	N. Richardson	11	0
2016	Kamara	10.22	0
2012	D. Young	9.69	0
2017	Callaway	8.38	0
2013	D. Young	7.88	0
2010	E. Gordon	6.5	0

If what the Vols do in close games projects to be a major factor in the difference between 6-6 and 8-4, special teams has the potential to swing an outcome or two in Tennessee’s favor. The Vol specialists quietly had a strong year in 2018. In 2019, expect more opportunities to make some noise.

Vegas likes somewhere between 6.5 and 7 wins for Tennessee this fall, a good starting point for expectations. Advanced stats like S&P+ and FPI turned some heads earlier in the off-season when their initial projections slotted the Vols at 21st and 15th, respectively. But those are power rankings, which don’t take strength of schedule into account The real meat and potatoes of those systems are their projected win total; in S&P+, that’s 6.5 for the Vols (Bill Connelly’s preseason data for every team is available here).

But when FPI released their full projection for Tennessee late last week, their number for the Vols came in at 7.6. And we like to round up.

So you’ve got objective sources and systems putting the Vols somewhere between 6-6 and 8-4 this fall. That part sounds about right. But FPI’s win totals also paint what would be a very favorable bowl picture for Tennessee.

The FPI projected win totals from the top of the SEC down:

• Alabama: 11.0
• Georgia: 9.9
• LSU: 9.5
• Florida: 8.3
• Missouri: 8.1
• Mississippi State: 7.7
• Auburn: 7.7
• Tennessee: 7.6
• Texas A&M: 7.4

In our look at initial bowl projections in late May, we noted that the SEC has put 2.8 teams per year in the College Football Playoff and New Year’s Six. Last year that number jumped to four. With the Sugar Bowl not hosting a semifinal game this year, the highest-ranked non-playoff SEC team is guaranteed a spot there.

So, for instance, if both history and FPI’s projections hold, and the league sends Alabama, Georgia, and LSU to the playoff and New Year’s Six, then sends Florida to the Citrus Bowl? If Tennessee is one of a crowded field of teams at 8-4 in the group of six bowls, its history and its two-year absence from any bowl game will make the Vols a prime candidate for, say, the Outback Bowl. That would be a pretty good year for Jeremy Pruitt in 2019.

Here’s the thing about the difference between 6-6 and 8-4: it will almost certainly be what the Vols did in close games. And Pruitt didn’t get much practice at that last season. The Vols held off Auburn late, and couldn’t finish at South Carolina. But otherwise Tennessee wasn’t sweating out a final drive.

The previous coaching staff courted close games, while also struggling to manage them well. As the Vols make progress and become more competitive, Pruitt will have to learn on the fly with things like clock management, when to go for it on fourth down, etc. And he’ll have to learn how to manage his team after close wins and close losses with much more on the line than we saw at South Carolina last year.

Remember, an 8-5 finish including the bowl game would be the third-best season in the last 12 years, and better than any post-Fulmer coach did in year two. If the Vols have eight wins going into the bowl, as FPI projects? Recent history suggests the Vols will spend the holidays in a better location than we might be imagining right now.

Only 54 days to go. If you’re looking for a reason for your optimism to kick in, FPI is happy to give it to you.

The Fourth of July always feels like the turning point in college football’s long summer away. Tennessee’s basketball conversation lasted longer than ever this year, and will continue in some ways with multiple Vols in the NBA Summer League over the next several days. But now, everyone’s focus starts to make a hard shift to football. Saturday will be eight weeks to kickoff. Media Days are just a week and a half from now. It’s close enough to count.

We’ll get a good look at two of Tennessee’s September foes right away: Florida opens the entire season a week early against Miami on August 24, and BYU plays the late night opening Thursday game against Utah on August 29. The Utes should be somewhere in the Top 20 when polls are released, and is about a touchdown favorite at BYU. Depending on what else happens in college football’s first full weekend, the Cougars could slide into the Top 25 with an upset, but that seems less likely than not.

Florida, however, is showing up in the Top 10 in just about every preseason magazine. The Canes are no slouch – Phil Steele has them at #15 – and the game is in Orlando. But the Gators will almost certainly still be in the Top 25 when Tennessee comes calling at the end of September; they’d have to lose to both Miami and at Kentucky to not still be ranked by then.

That game opens another difficult stretch for Tennessee, though it is thankfully followed by an open date. The Vols will face Florida, Georgia, Mississippi State, and Alabama all in a row. If you’re looking for the chalk version of how Tennessee gets to 7-5, I’m not sure it includes wins in any of those games. The Vols could hit their Vegas number by getting all of their non-conference games, including BYU, returning to form against Kentucky and Vanderbilt, and beating South Carolina in Knoxville. That particular path would mean a 3-0 start, 0-4 middle, and 4-1 finish.

We’re more used to the 0-4 middle than we’d like to admit, in part because of who’s usually in that middle on our schedule. This could be the last time we see it, as the Vols and Georgia will see their annual rivalry move to November starting next fall. That’s good news for Tennessee, as the Vols have more or less played Florida and Georgia within a couple weeks of each other over the entire 27-year history of the SEC East. You can be essentially eliminated from the division chase by the first week of October that way. In the future, should Georgia continue to be a front-runner, Tennessee can at least carry hope, real or imagined, into November.

But for now, the Vols might face four consecutive ranked foes for the fourth time in eight years. Florida will almost certainly be there. Georgia and Alabama feel like locks, as usual; the Dawgs host Notre Dame two weeks before traveling to Knoxville, while Alabama has to go to Texas A&M the week before hosting Tennessee. But those are their only major threats before facing the Vols.

And then there’s Mississippi State. Last time the Vols and Bulldogs met was 2012, Derek Dooley’s final season. There are similarities between that schedule and this one: NC State and BYU are lower-level non-conference foes than what Tennessee normally faces, and if you’re picking which non-Alabama SEC West team you’d least like to face, the answer usually isn’t going to be Mississippi State. In what became Dooley’s final season, there was still plenty of, “We don’t lose to Mississippi State,” in the atmosphere. Since then, Dan Mullen took the Bulldogs to the New Year’s Six and another Top 25 finish in his final year in Starkville; Joe Moorehead followed up with a #25 finish in the coaches’ poll last year. Mississippi State may not carry the tradition and rivalry of Auburn or even LSU, but the Bulldogs are still in a much healthier place than Tennessee.

And their opening schedule – Louisiana-Lafayette, Southern Miss, Kansas State, Kentucky, and Auburn – means they could come to Knoxville 4-1 or even 5-0, making it four straight ranked foes for Tennessee.

The Vols faced four straight ranked foes in Derek Dooley’s final season, going 0-4 and losing any hope of escaping a coaching change. The following season the Vols faced five straight ranked foes, getting a win over South Carolina in a 1-4 stretch. And in 2016, the Vols beat Florida and Georgia before falling to Texas A&M and Alabama.

Four straight ranked foes often leads to four game losing streaks. The Vols suffered that fate every year from 2010-13, and again in 2017. But they also present opportunities for valuable, momentum-changing upsets; Jeremy Pruitt was able to get a pair of those last season.

The Vols might also get a fifth shot at a ranked foe. If we were in serious consideration for the SEC East this year, right now we’d be complaining about Missouri’s schedule: the Tigers catch Ole Miss and Arkansas out of the SEC West, and also host a rebuilding West Virginia in the non-conference. Missouri’s first eight games: at Wyoming, West Virginia, Southeast Missouri State, South Carolina, Troy, Ole Miss, at Vanderbilt, at Kentucky, followed by an open date. Then comes the fun part: at Georgia, Florida, then the Vols (who are coming off a bye week). The Tigers could build up enough momentum to be fairly high up the polls before facing the Dawgs, Gators, and Vols.

It’s easy to sit back in July and say how much one win or another would be worth, but it never works out exactly the way you think. Last July, beating Kentucky seemed like a reasonable goal. By November, it was a Top 15 feather in Jeremy Pruitt’s cap. What seems most likely is, perhaps for the last time, a brutal late September to mid-October gauntlet, and maybe another four game stretch of ranked opponents. But in Pruitt’s second year, there’s enough optimism to view it as opportunity.

You always start with the quarterback when doing the ominous summer piece on who you can least afford to lose. And Guarantano fits that bill, with unproven options behind him and untapped potential in front of him.

It’s more fun to think of this conversation in terms of replacement value. There are plenty of players we know will be valuable to the 2019 Vols, but many of the names that immediately come to mind play positions where depth is on Tennessee’s side: Marquez Callaway and Jauan Jennings, Alontae Taylor and Bryce Thompson, and maybe even Emmit Gooden and Aubrey Solomon. We also don’t know what version, if any, of Trey Smith we’ll get until we see him out there.

You have to look beyond Tennessee’s biggest names on offense, and many of them on defense. I do think you can make a case for Darrell Taylor; his eight sacks last year were the most for any Vol this decade other than Derek Barnett and Curt Maggitt, and his performance against ranked foes from Georgia and Kentucky definitely turned heads. Phil Steele lists him as the number four draft-eligible outside linebacker and a fourth-team All-American. The Vols are especially deep at linebacker, including some of their most exciting freshmen. But if Taylor simply proves to be that much better than the rest of that group, it’s good news for the Vols.

Still, I might through another name out there for most difficult to replace, at least in theory: Dominick Wood-Anderson.

The unrealistic expectations we tend to put on high-profile newcomers were just that for him last season: 17 catches for 140 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He was the number six option in the passing game last season. Likewise, the expectations we might have for Jim Chaney and tight ends may also be unfounded.

But if the Vols do find a spark getting Wood-Anderson involved this time around, it could get really thin behind him.

Tennessee’s only other returning reception by a tight end was a memorable one: Austin Pope against the Gators. I really want something good to happen to that kid. Behind him, it’s a bunch of unknowns, including four-star freshman Jackson Lowe.

The Vols might find something really good with Wood-Anderson this fall. If they do, he’ll instantly become one of the most valuable players on the team, in part because the options to replace him are so unproven.

Who else might be on the hardest-to-replace list?

Tennessee is 67-70 in the last 11 years, a longer sub-.500 run in the modern era than we can find for any of the other 15 winningest programs in college football history. A more concrete way to look at it: the Vols haven’t finished a season in the AP Top 20 since 2007, sneaking in at #22 after bowl wins in 2015 and 2016. That 11-year drought is also the longest on record in the modern era for any of the 15 winningest programs (via Wikipedia):

Team	Years w/o Top 20 Finish	Seasons
Tennessee	11	2008-18
Nebraska	8	2011-18
Florida	8	1975-82
Michigan	7	1957-63
LSU	7	1989-95
Notre Dame	6	1981-86
Oklahoma	6	1994-99
Texas	6	1984-99
Southern Cal	6	1996-2001
Penn State	6	2010-15
Miami	6	2010-15
Ohio State	5	1987-91
Alabama	5	1954-58
Florida State	5	2005-09
Georgia	4	1993-96
Auburn	4	1976-79

The second-longest drought among these teams isn’t actually Nebraska’s current stretch: it’s also Tennessee, 10 years from 1975-84. So good news: the Vols have made this climb before. What Jeremy Pruitt is trying to dig out of is most similar to the challenge Johnny Majors faced in the early 1980’s.

When Doug Dickey left for Florida in 1969, Bill Battle took over and led the Vols to an 11-1 finish in 1970, the highest-rated Vol squad in estimated S&P+ of the last 50 years. Tennessee went 10-2 in 1971, then 25-9-2 in Condredge Holloway’s three seasons at quarterback. The Vols finished in the Top 20 in each of Battle’s first five seasons.

But the Vols went 7-5 in 1975 and 6-5 in 1976, ran their losing streak to Alabama to six straight, and Battle was replaced with native son Johnny Majors fresh off his national championship at Pittsburgh.

Majors’ first four Tennessee teams had a combined record of 21-23-1 and only one bowl appearance. If you’re just looking at wins and losses, his fifth team in 1981 appears to have broken the trend with an 8-4 season. But estimated S&P+ rates that team as the second-worst of the last 50 years behind 2017. Here’s a closer look at Majors’ first five seasons:

	W	L	T	Pts For	Pts Against	vs Ranked	One Poss.
1977	4	7	0	229	229	0-3	1-2
1978	5	5	1	251	209	0-3	0-0-1
1979	7	5	0	311	235	1-2	1-2
1980	5	6	0	256	189	1-4	0-3
1981	8	4	0	244	265	0-3	6-0

Going 6-0 in one possession games (including 24-21 over Wichita State and 38-34 vs Vanderbilt) is a great way to mask a negative point differential. In reality, these first five years should be grouped together as the downturn before we start talking about Tennessee’s slow and steady ascent.

If 1981 was a relative bottom from a competitiveness standpoint, the Vols made incremental progress every year from there. This too didn’t always show up in the win column, but you can see it in the point differential:

	W	L	T	Pts For	Pts Against	vs Ranked	One Poss.
1982	6	5	1	281	239	1-0-1	3-3-1
1983	9	3	0	282	165	2-2	3-1
1984	7	4	1	327	276	0-3	4-2-1

(On the strength of the 1983 defense: see White, Reggie.)

In estimated S&P+ percentile, the Vols went from 35.63 in 1981 to 55.46 to 80.07 to 87.26 in 1984. After a 1-2 start in 1983 with losses to #10 Pittsburgh and #11 Auburn, the Vols won eight of their last nine games and just missed running the table in a 13-10 loss to Ole Miss. Three of Tennessee’s four losses in 1984 came to ranked opponents, the fourth to a Kentucky squad that finished the season ranked.

Progress was there, though it might’ve been harder to see in the moment. I was born in 1981, so I can’t really speak to the personal experience of any of these years. But I can guarantee you what made everything better for Johnny Majors was beating Alabama.

The Tide won 11 straight from 1971-81. But Tennessee upset the #2 Tide 35-28 in 1982, Bear Bryant’s final season. In 1983 it was 41-34 over #11 Alabama in Birmingham thanks to a Johnnie Jones run. And in 1984 the Vols erased a 14-point deficit in the final nine minutes to win 28-27 in Knoxville.

When you get three straight against your biggest rival, everything else matters a little less. Consider how many Butch Jones sins are forgiven if the Vols beat Florida in 2014, 2015, and 2016 (and 2017, for that matter).

After going 29-27-1 (.518) from 1977-81, the Vols went 22-12-2 (.688) the next three seasons. Getting back to being a team that averaged 7-8 wins in an 11-game regular season was a big step. But at this point, the Vols had still gone 10 years without finishing in the AP Top 20.

The breakthrough came in 1985:

	W	L	T	Pts For	Pts Against	vs Ranked	One Poss.
1985	9	1	2	325	140	3-1-1	2-1-2

Not only did the Vols get four straight against Alabama, they dominated Bo Jackson and #1 Auburn 38-20. The Vols won the SEC and, of course, beat #2 Miami 35-7 in the Sugar Bowl, putting an emphatic end to a decade away from the national stage with a top five finish.

It took a little more time for that kind of finish to become commonplace. The Vols yo-yoed with a 7-5 finish in 1986, 10-2-1 ranked 14th in 1987, and 5-6 in 1988. But from there, Tennessee entered its longest stretch of sustained excellence: 129-29-2 from 1989-2001, a .813 winning percentage that was best in the SEC for those 13 years. With the exception of an obvious rebuild in 2000, the Vols played at the 88th percentile or better in estimated S&P+ for that entire stretch. The Vols played at the 87th percentile or below every year from 1975-84.

After last season, Tennessee’s drought in the postseason AP Top 20 reached 11 years, one more than that 1975-84 downturn. To be sure, the Vols seem farther away from a championship breakthrough in 2019 than they were in 1984. But Jeremy Pruitt and the Vols are already following that early 80’s blueprint:

	W	L	T	Pts For	Pts Against	vs Ranked	One Poss.
2017	4	8	0	238	349	0-4	2-3
2018	5	7	0	273	335	2-3	1-1

2017 and 1981 are the two lowest seasons of the last 50 years in estimated S&P+ percentile; 2017 is far worse at 17.4%, but remember that 1981 team won six one-possession games. They’re not so dissimilar considering Butch Jones’ last team lost on the final play against Florida, South Carolina, and Kentucky.

So we’ve already seen the Vols make progress from the bottom. But like those early Majors teams, Tennessee had a hard time just getting in one-possession games last year. The trap Butch Jones’ teams fell into was believing being close was a good thing, playing far too many one-possession and even final-play games to escape a treadmill that topped out at 8-4. But for Jeremy Pruitt in year two, courting heartbreak via close games would look like progress. It can’t be confused for the destination – Pruitt’s time at Florida State and Alabama blowing teams up should assure he’s already learned that lesson – but it’s a step the Vols can take along the way.

Being gone longer than any other blue-blood program should remind us of the task at hand. But Tennessee’s climb in the early 1980’s – slow but steady – should remind us that such a feat can be accomplished at this university. It may not happen as fast as any of us want, but progress is both readily available and already underway. Keep recruiting and developing well. Get competitive but don’t settle for living there. Make 8-4 an average expectation and not something you have to rebuild after. And, you know, beat Florida.

Tennessee has a long way to go, perhaps longer than any other program with our past can appreciate. But the Vols have made this climb before, and came out of it with their very best days ahead of them. I’m eager to see what the next step will look like this fall.