Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark.
Daily Archives: January 19, 2021
A whole new ballgame
It’s too much effort for me to go back looking for the post, but I remember writing something back in the day when Mark Richt was coaching about how the college passing game was evolving towards an emphasis on completion percentage, something that was not a priority through the stretch when Greene, Shockley and Stafford were starting.
With that in mind, here’s some data David Hale’s compiled on that metric.
What you get from today’s elite quarterbacks is everything: completion percentage and yards per attempt.
I’m pretty sure Kirby Smart knows that as well as anybody these days.
Filed under Stats Geek!, Strategery And Mechanics
Tuesday morning buffet
All Tennessee, all the time.
- Dennis Dodd: “Yes, the Tennessee job remains attractive, but is it good? Florida, Georgia (in the SEC East) and Alabama are better. Those programs certainly have more dignity.”
- Lest we forget: “… Fulmer himself signed a two-year extension through 2023, which included a six-figure retention bonus. Of all the people in sports administration in America, Phillip Fulmer wasn’t going anywhere. Nobody else would hire him to be an AD. And here was Tennessee giving him retention bonuses for a job he was never suited to have to begin with.”
- Pete Thamel: “Instead of reestablishing glory, Tennessee ended up microwaving rotting salmon. Fulmer was the fish at the SEC poker table from the moment he sat down. And Tennessee officials were the only ones in the league who failed to realize he was under-qualified, overmatched and destined to transition the corpse of Tennessee’s football program from a shallow grave to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a new batch of administrators now who would dream of the issues the program had under Butch Jones.”
- Wes Rucker: “This is one hell of a mess — even by Tennessee standards.”
- Ralph Russo: “3 years later, Tennessee is worse off than it was and looking for exactly what it had.“
- Bruce Feldman: “Once again, the Vols have a coaching search on their hands. Peyton Manning will have a big role in this decision, sources tell me.”
- John Talty: “Jeremy Pruitt has told those around him this year if he gets fired, he’ll just go back to Alabama and work for Saban again.“
- After the 2017 college football season, six SEC schools hired head coaches. Four of them have already been fired.
- Auburn and Tennessee have fired coaches in the same season in 2008, 2012, and now 2020.
If I’m honest, I have to admit with as much pleasure as I took from correctly predicting that Junior would bail on UT at the first opportunity, this is giving me more.
Quite the track record you got there
If at first you don’t succeed…
LOL. Meanwhile, you can bookend the legacy of the Coach Who Isn’t Greg Schiano between these two quotes ($$):
In the months before Jeremy Pruitt’s first game as Tennessee’s coach, a person close to Pruitt offered The Athletic a frank assessment of how his first head coaching tenure would play out.
“In three years, he’ll either have them in the Playoff or on probation,” the person said…
“When I took the job, I sat down with Coach Fulmer and he looked me dead in the eye and he said the head coach at Tennessee is going to be judged on three games: Florida, Georgia and Alabama,” Pruitt said at the lectern of a Rotary Club meeting back in 2018.
The thing is, Travis, shtick and all, probably couldn’t do a worse job hiring a football coach than UT’s last few athletic directors have.
Lawyer up, sluggo.
If Tennessee thought Jeremy Pruitt was the type to go quietly in the night and forgo a $12 million buyout, well…
https://twitter.com/38Godfrey/status/1351343633459523590
You may remember something Lyons said after he got Jeff Long to capitulate.
Shots have already been fired in Knoxville.
Tennessee’s firing of football coach Jeremy Pruitt appeared to be an “orchestrated effort” focused on “financial convenience and expediency” over fairness, Pruitt’s lawyer, Michael Lyons, said in a statement to Knox News on Monday night.
Pruitt hired Lyons and the firm Lyons & Simmons after he was fired for cause by Tennessee earlier Monday following an internal investigation.
“He is extremely disappointed with the decision, the public announcement of which was made prior to any substantive opportunity to respond before the appropriate decision makers,” Lyons said in a statement made on Pruitt’s behalf. “We believe the decision to be the culmination of an orchestrated effort to renege on contractual promises made to Coach Pruitt upon his hiring in 2017 and reiterated less than five months ago.”
Nice touch, reminding everyone what a dumbass Phil Fulmer was for agreeing to that extension.
“The timing of the University’s actions and decision appear to be preordained and more about financial convenience and expediency than a fair and complete factual determination by the University,” Lyons said. “Moreover, it seems clear the recent leaks to the press are indicative of an interest to steer the narrative in a way that is desirable to the University to justify a decision likely made weeks ago.”
Well, duh.
Look, once the wheels were set in motion, this was only going to end in one way — the side who knows where most of the bodies are buried will win. And that’s not as clear cut for Jeremy Pruitt as it was for David Beaty, at least if the allegations the UT brass made yesterday about serious NCAA violations are true.
Grab the popcorn bag and wait to see who blinks first.
Scheduling note
Dawg fans, mark your calendars and then cross your fingers.
To that need, we can report that Spring Practice for the Georgia Bulldogs is set to start on March 16.
G-Day will be held on April 17.
Granted, this is all predicated on actually having spring practice, etc., but with the policies and testing place that allowed for the 2020 season to take place, fans can hope to start seeing practice updates in mid-March.
The Masters will take place on April 8-11 so there should not be a conflict with G-Day.
I love Athens in the spring. How ’bout you?
Filed under Georgia Football
Name that caption, snappy looking edition
If it seems like I’m piling on, it’s only because I am.
Your takes are welcomed in the comments.
Filed under Name That Caption
Get The Picture 