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How Much Trouble is Tennessee Vols Head Coach Butch Jones In?

By Caleb Calhoun

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The Tennessee Volunteers football team has stumbled to a 2-3 start after high expectations in the preseason, which could spell trouble for Butch Jones.

The hot seat talk began with Tennessee losing to Florida last week.

But after a 24-20 loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday, Butch Jones could be in serious trouble now.

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Nearly halfway into his third season on the job, Jones is in danger of mirroring Derek Dooley’s career in Knoxville. And he was fired before his third season was even up.

Is Jones going to meet the same fate? There are a few things working against him.

For starters, Jones did not come into the job with a stick as short as Dooley’s. Dooley inherited a team in which Lane Kiffin kicked off what seemed half the players the year before and was left with one very thin recruiting class.

So with the cupboard a little more stocked for Jones, there is no excuse to be this bad. It looks even worse when guys like Jim McElwain, Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh, and Urban Meyer have all shown an ability to turn around programs quickly.

But, at the same time, there are a few selling points Jones can make as well.

Although the cupboard was more stocked when he arrived in Knoxville than when Dooley did, Jones’s situation was unique. Dooley made the terrible decision to not recruit players in a year if he was stacked at that position, evidenced by when he did not sign an offensive linemen in 2012.

The result was leaving Jones with an even emptier cupboard into his second season. So into his third season, he really only has two and a half recruiting classes to work with, and the two both came from him. At the same time, all of these players are extremely young.

Dooley’s team was much more experienced in 2012 and had a lot of depth.

Jones, ironically, does not have that, even though the future looks brighter.

Also, unlike under Dooley, Tennessee is showing significant improvement. Last year, the Vols were blown out against Oklahoma and took them to overtime this year. The Florida outcome was the same, but this year’s Florida team is clearly better. And Arkansas is now the Arkansas we thought they were after those two hiccups against Toledo and Texas Tech.

Yes, Jones is struggling in close games, but he can sell improvement.

Our final judgment is this: No matter what happens, Jones should not be fired at the end of the year. He is not in that much trouble. However, he has got to show more improvement this season. Tennessee now needs to score an upset over either Alabama or Georgia, and after those two games, he has to run the table the rest of the year.

That will keep him off the hot seat going into the offseason. But if that does not happen, even if he is not fired, his seat will be extremely warm all through next year.

So Jones has got to turn that final corner.

Next: Five Things We Learned About the Vols in their Loss to Arkansas

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