Tennessee Football: Is it still football season?

Well, the Tennessee Volunteers lost another heartbreaker in overtime to BYU in front of BYU, and something is going to have to change.

Tennessee players were running their mouths all week. Whether it was positive quotes about turning around the program or calling the fan base “fake a– fans” they couldn’t shut their mouth, and they paid for it on Saturday.

Tennessee had opportunity after opportunity in the second half to add on to their lead and put the game away but continued to fall short thanks to poor offensive play calling. If we didn’t have Cimaglia, we wouldn’t have even made it to overtime.

Thank goodness we have him on our team if we had another kicker and we were without Jauan Jennings we might not have scored more than ten points.

The defense did improve, and throughout most of the game they had the BYU offense pretty much locked down. If you’re looking to take a positive thing out of this game, you can look at the defense.

Henry To’o To’o showed some leadership and command at linebacker after failing to do so in Week 1. The defense fell apart in the end, but they shouldn’t have been put in that position.

If you’re throwing some of the blame on Alontae Taylor, don’t do that either. Yeah, he made a bad play that ultimately gave up ten points but if the offense were worth anything we wouldn’t have had to worry about that.

Since we’re back on the subject of the offense, we need a new quarterback. I don’t care if it’s Maurer or Jennings or Trey Smith if Tennessee is going to win more than two games this year they’re going to need someone who can make reads and accurate throws consistently.

And I can’t put all the blame on JG either even though he looked really bad in the second half. I don’t know what Jim Chaney was thinking calling plays, but in the fourth quarter especially and overtime the play-calling absolutely sucked.

It’s fourth and one and if we can get a first down we can put the game away. Chaney calls a reverse and of course gets stuffed at the line of scrimmage. If a reverse is the best play call you have on fourth and one we might need to start evaluating your position in the program.

I think we’re going to have to evaluate a lot of coach’s position within the program before things turn around and it might have to start at the top. I know Pruitt is just in his second year, and we have to give him time, but we have taken a huge step back from last year.

Phillip Fulmer attended Pruitt’s post-game presser and in five words or less he doesn’t look happy.  He has that “meet me in my office at the end of the day” face after Tennessee is embarrassed for the second straight week in Neyland.

Whether he makes that decision or not, I don’t think it’s fair to throw the blame on this on Fulmer. He picked what he thought was the guy for Tennessee and if we’re all being honest 90% of us at least thought Pruitt was the guy before Week 1.

He picked a good defensive coach similar to his own playstyle in a game that’s now revolved around offensive success. If Tennessee continues to trot out JG at quarterback they will have the opposite of offensive success.

I will never not wish Tennessee had Mike Leach or even Lane Kiffin on the sidelines. Even Kiffin wouldn’t allow this to happen; he has more pride than that. And we all know Leach would’ve put up 40 on this team with someone other than JG in at quarterback.

Tennessee might need another change of scenery sooner rather than later. It might be best to try these two-year trial runs rather than wasting five years on a coach who ultimately isn’t going to get us past eight regular-season wins.

I don’t know what’s next for the Vols, but I do know one thing. The Vols might be heading for 0-12. Whether you think they’re better than UTC or not from what I’ve seen so far, they might be able to squeak out a win late.