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A Fan’s Perspective of the Derek Dooley Era as Tennessee Vols Head Coach

By Caleb Calhoun

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Derek Dooley’s failure as head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers is the result of many events, some that were his fault, some that were not. Let’s take his career back from the beginning.

Many of you have probably read “Oral History of the Derek Dooley Era at Tennessee” on Fox Sports by Mark Nagi by now, and if not you can click here to read it.

If not, you should.

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This is an amazing piece in which Nagi recaps the Derek Dooley era by quoting media members, officials, and former players who dealt with him the whole time. It really gives you insight into exactly why Dooley was such a failure as a head coach with the Vols.

But here, without any insider’s quote, we will bring you the fan’s perspective and what we all saw as outsiders who just follow the program.

Let’s retrace everything that affected the Derek Dooley Era, starting from before he was even head coach.

Laying the Seeds

The Derek Dooley era can honestly be traced back to before Lane Kiffin stepped onto campus and before Phillip Fulmer was fired. It goes back to Fulmer’s poor recruiting his last three years.

Fulmer’s classes in 2006 and 2008 were uniquely bad for Tennessee. His 2007 class was a Top Five class led by Eric Berry, but that becomes an issue too.

So with two bad classes and one class working out fine, in comes Lane Kiffin in 2009.

Kiffin was a bad hire, obviously, by Mike Hamilton, but we loved him in Knoxville mainly because of his brash personality. Honestly, Fulmer had been a broken record for quotes for 10 years and we had been pushed around by our Rivals, and here comes a young guy bringing in Top 10 classes and angering everybody in the SEC with his personality. We loved it.

The class that Kiffin had in 2009 at the time seemed awesome. He nailed a Top 10 class and had the best player in the country committed, so we just new the future was in good shape despite his decisions to run off Tajh Boyd and Bryce Petty.

But, in his arrogance, Kifin did one thing that really set the program back. He was so set on using his players that he kicked off half the team it felt like when he stepped onto campus. By the end of the 2009 season, the 2007 class was half the size it was when it was brought in, and the 2006 and 2008 classes were, if possible, even worse.

Then, in January, Kiffin obviously shocks us all by announcing his decision to go to USC. It is at the worst time with Signing Day two weeks away, and Kiffin has already decimated the class. Many of the guys we thought we were going to nail at the end we ended up not bringing.

But here were are in early 2010, the same position we were in at the end of 2008. Mike Hamilton’s decision after that would be crucial.

The Coaching Change

The coaching search did not go well. Kippy Brown was named interim Head Coach.

Mike Hamilton was turned down by Will Muschamp, Troy Calhoun, and David Cutcliffe, which was the biggest kick in the gut.

But there were still two qualified candidates before turning to Derek Dooley. One was obviously Brown. He had deep ties to Tennessee and the Fulmer and Majors administrations.

The other was Kevin Sumlin. At the time Sumlin has just had back to back winning seasons at Houston and was going to be a top candidate for the job.

Hamilton gave neither coach a look. They scored interviews after Dooley. After interviewing Dooley, Hamilton had already made up his mind when he interviewed the other two.

I can’t speak on what was in Hamilton’s mind when he decided to hire a guy who was 17-20 as a head coach over a guy who was 18-9 at an equally prestigious school or a guy who had deep ties to the program. Dooley’s family ties, his Nick Saban connection, his SEC roots, and yes, his race compared to Sumlin and Brown, have all been brought up.

And all of them crossed my mind and probably the minds of other fans.

None of us had heard of Dooley at the time, only that he was 17-20 at Louisiana Tech. In my opinion, I had thought that maybe he would one day be a great coach, but he had never proven anything yet, and certainly not enough to coach at Tennessee. I was taken back to Alabama’s situation in 2003 when they hired Mike Shula, an unqualified coach who had a family name.

That’s exactly what Hamilton did, and while he could at least say Kippy Brown had no head coaching experience, it made no sense for Dooley to be hired over Kevin Sumlin. You can judge why, but it is beyond an inexplicable decision, and one of the dumbest ever.

Derek Dooley’s First Month

Despite the reservations of Derek Dooley, he appeared to immediately win over the program’s fan base. Dooley won the press conference, he was a clean-cut southern boy with a good haircut, and he came across as a guy who could be a CEO, just like Nick Saban but nicer.

Honestly, I was not crazy about the press conference though. It looked to me as if Hamilton had just reacted emotionally and decided to bring in the anti-Kiffin. Three days before he was telling everybody how Kiffin’s brash personality helped to put us on the map. Now he’s bringing in the opposite of Kiffin? It made no sense.

Where Dooley one me over is recruiting. This was an early bright spot for him, starting with the players already enrolled.

While Bryce Brown left, many stayed. There were rumors that Ed Orgeron had told the new recruits who enrolled in January not to go to class so they could switch over to USC. We can’t confirm if that’s true or not.

But what is true is that they mostly decided to stay. Then, Dooley somehow brought in another Top 10 class led by Da’Rick Rogers. We thought we would be alright.

Then, things got better in a sick pleasure sort of way in the summer. USC was put on probation. Many of there players transferred out. Dooley picked one up in Malik Jackson.

Hey all of a sudden, things were looking up. The only problem was what had happened before. Fulmer’s poor recruiting and Kiffin’s decisions left Dooley in a bind.

His team was made up of two bad classes, one class in which half the players were gone, a 2009 class that was top heavy and also had half the players gone by the start of the 2010 season, and the 2010 class. It was not much to work with in the SEC, and it would set the Vols back.

Dooley’s First Season Begins

After retaining some of the staff, including Jim Chaney and Lance Thompson, and bringing in Justin Wilcox as defensive coordinator, we had reason to still be excited about the staff.

And Tennessee opens the season with Matt Simms as quarterback. Simms gets blown out by Oregon, and we lose to Florida for the sixth year in a row.

But hey, we were all aware that this would be a very rough season with a wounded program.

Then, against LSU, we saw the first signs of Dooley not knowing how to coach. We all know the story. Dooley had coached a great game in which the Vols had no turnovers and forced plenty of mistakes. At the end, LSU had run a 2nd and goal play down 14-0.

And with no timeouts, clock mismanagement by LSU causes them to run out of time. But, as they run their final play, the mix-up confuses our staff and our players, and the Vols are left with too many men on the field.

Then LSU gets a second chance and scores the game winning touchdown. Here’s the play.

I was in Baton Rouge at the time and had celebrated with my brother thinking we had pulled off our first signature win in the Dooley era. That is still one of the most sickening trips I think I’ve ever been on.

LSU fans felt bad for us and, in a rare moment, were extremely nice to us and telling us to stick with Dooley, reminding us they liked him when he was there under Saban.

Nothing salvaged it at the time, though. And things only got worse.

The brutal stretch of Tennessee’s schedule followed LSU, and our lack of talent and depth in the SEC showed. Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina all blew us out, and all of a sudden we were 2-6.

Dooley decided to make a change then at quarterback, and Tyler Bray came in. It was exciting for us fans because we felt were going to see our future the last part of the year.

And did we ever.

Bray and another freshman, Justin Hunter, appeared to establish a connection like no other. Da’Rick Rogers was still in the mix, but Bray and Hunter were on another level.

The result was four straight wins against losing teams to get to 6-6. Hey, that’s not bad for a first year head coach taking over a terrible program. We had hope.

The Music City Bowl loss to North Carolina is memorable because it’s another game we thought we won, but it did not matter much in the grand scheme of things. Yes, college football added a runoff rule because of it and the loss gave us a losing season, but we still were thinking about the future.

Dooley in 2011

The 2011 season begins just after the 2010 season ends. Here was our first test of Dooley. How would he do in recruiting with a full year?

And honestly, he was not that good. It was a major red flag. Dooley nailed a Top 15 class with no five-star players, but it was not a Top 10 class. And in many ways that is unacceptable at Tennessee.

But he sold it to us, kind of the way he did in his introductory press conference. He used words like “hot sauce” and not throwing it on recruits to nail big names at the end just to improve the class rankings. That was fine with us because the big names lured in the previous years under Fulmer and Kiffin too often turned out to be busts.

So we nail a Top 15 class and buy into Dooley’s quote that this year will be like Year One. It was a fair analysis because we knew the incredible mess he inherited, and two decent recruiting classes would not fix that.

The Vols started 2-0, highlighted by win over Cincinnati with Butch Jones ironically on the other sideline. We felt, with Cincinnati out toughest non-conference game, we were already in good shape because it would likely be the first time since 2006 that we did not lose a regular season non-conference game.

And then came Florida. This had to be the year we would end the streak. The Gators were not that good under first-year coach Will Muschamp, and our offense appeared to be clicking. This was the first wake-up call.

Justin Hunter goes down early in a non-contact knee injury that ends his season. Our team never recovers. Bray has trouble reading Will Muschamp’s complex schemes all game, and once again, Florida somehow walks away victorious.

That was a rough loss because it meant, with out brutal October, we would likely struggle to get past six wins now.

But two games later, at 3-1, we have Georgia at home. This seems like a very winnable game. Georgia is unranked and started the year 0-2. Yet here we can’t generate anything on offense all game, and in the second half Tyler Bray goes down with an injury.

The loss to Georgia was devastating because of who was up next and the knowledge that we needed to win. But the injury to Bray really set us back.

Tennessee got blown out by Alabama and LSU, the two best teams in the country, and then, with Justin Worley now in as the new quarterback, they could not generate anything in a 14-3 loss to South Carolina.

All of a sudden, 3-1 was 3-5, and two games later they lost to Arkansas, the third best team in the country, in a blowout.

At 4-6, Tennessee got Tyler Bray back and a surprisingly good Vanderbilt team at home under first-year coach James Franklin. The Vols pulled off an overtime win to get to 5-6.

But the loss the next week was really what put Dooley on the hot seat. To this point, Dooley had inherited the worst situation you could possibly inherit at a major program. We saw what happened to the recruits in 2008 and 2009. We knew he did not have a full roster.

And he got a mulligan with the freak injuries to Tyler Bray and Justin Hunter for the 2011 season if he could at least get us back to a bowl game. But the 10-7 loss to Kentucky meant those excuses were running thin.

In 2012, he had to have a turnaround.

The 2011-2012 Offseason Generates Excitement

The offseason after 2011 got off to a rocky start. Dooley lost a number of coaches to other jobs and had to replace them, most notable Sal Sunseri replacing Justin Wilcox at defensive coordinator. That decision made all the difference.

We went into Signing Day in 2012 with another Top 15 class. Many in the Vol camp were already done with Dooley. I was not.

I thought that with three recruiting class under his belt now and enough bodies, Tennessee was back to at least being able to compete and being a Top 25 team. I got excited when I heard Dooley at SEC Media Days say you were not going to have Tennessee to kick around anymore.

We had reason to be excited. Dooley had been tempering expectations for two years, and now, going into his third year, he was building them up. He obviously felt he had the roster he needed as well.

We all ignored one red flag: the change on defense.

Sunseri may not be a bad coordinator, but he brought in a 3-4 defense and said he was throwing everything at the players. Every time a defense makes this switch, it is the toughest transition to make. Dooley should have known that and not made the switch in a year in which he was on the hot seat.

But as the season began, we forgot about it.

The 2012 Season Begins

Tennessee opened the season with a new superstar at receiver in junior college transfer Cordarrelle Patterson to play opposite Justin Hunter, a perfect replacement for the recently dismissed Da’Rick Rogers.

And the Vols opened the season with an amazing passing attack to beat N.C. State in Atlanta. It can’t be under-estimated how significant that win was at the time. Not only did Tennessee win their toughest out of conference game.

They broke what we all know to be the Georgia Dome curse, where the Vols went 0-6 in the 2000s, including three games in which they were favorites, most notably the loss to LSU in 2001.

They start the year 2-0 again, and we look in the Top 25 rankings the next week and see our beloved Vols there for the first time since the first game of the 2008 season.

And Florida is coming to town. This is it. The seven-game streak has to end.

College Gameday is here, the whole crew picks us, we are finally getting respect, and this will be the game that sets us on the path to returning to dominance.

With a 20-13 fourth quarter lead over the Gators and then a stop on a fake punt that gives us the ball back at midfield, we are now sure this is our night. But on a fateful drive that could have put the game away, Will Muschamp’s defense shuts us down.

They get the ball and score on one play to tie it up, taking advantage of our confused defense in this 3-4 scheme. Our offense, led by our mentally weak quarterback, does not recover.

We have to punt it back to Florida two more times, and they score two more times, and all of a sudden they have a 34-20 lead. Tennessee loses the game 37-20, their eighth straight loss to Florida.

A lot of fans point to the Kentucky loss in 2011 as what set back Dooley. I point to this one. This was the heartbreaker of 2012 and the biggest letdown. We would never mentally recover from losing to our hated rivals for an eighth straight year.

Then came Georgia two weeks later, and we saw our bad defense on full display. The offense contended in a shootout with the Dawgs, but we lost 51-44.

After that, the defense could not slow down Mississippi State. And then they got blown out by Alabama.

In short, at this point, Dooley was in serious trouble. Tennessee was 3-4 again, and he needed to have an 8 or 9-win season to really sell staying on the job. And it all came down to the 3-4 switch, which kept us at that point from being 6-1.

The next week against South Carolina was the nail in the coffin for me. Tennessee and the Gamecocks played it down to the wire before Jadeveon Clowney sacked Tyler Bray and forced a fumble with the Vols about to score the game-winner to secure the victory. In that game, Tennessee’s defense had allowed a touchdown on a 3rd and 26 play, just so you have context on how bad it was.

Tennessee was 3-5, and for me, that was it. Dooley would have no signature victories this year, and he would get to 7-5 at best. But things still got worse. The defense gave up more than 40 points to Troy the next week.

Then, in what was certainly the nail in the coffin, Dooley lost at home to Missouri, who was terrible that year. Everybody knew Dooley was done. In a major twist of irony, it only added insult to injury that the same day Dooley lost to Missouri and we knew he was fired, we all got to witness Texas A&M upset Alabama behind Johnny Manziel, putting the Aggies and their new head coach on the map.

That new head coach was obviously Kevin Sumlin, the guy Mike Hamilton took over Dooley three years before. Sumlin inherited a mediocre team moving into the toughest division in college football, and he had the team in the Top 10 in November. This was the best thing possible to make Hamilton, who was thankfully gone by this time, look like the biggest moron in sports.

The next week for Tennessee was the hitting of rock bottom. Knowing Dooley is gone, knowing the season is a loss, and now looking back knowing we screwed up not bringing in Sumlin, the Vols simply did not play against Vanderbilt. And the Commodores blew them out.

Dooley was fired the next day.

From a fan’s perspective, with no knowledge of the documented player relationships or his questionable recruiting methods documented on the Fox article, the failure of Derek Dooley at Tennessee cannot all be placed on him. It is certainly true that he walked into a terrible mess, which is why he deserved three years before having a good season.

But he still had no reason for three straight losing seasons, and that last year came down to a fateful defensive coordinator decision. Dooley’s job came down to just a couple of decisions he made, but that’s life.

Next: Vols Recruiting Notes at Dead Period: Offensive Line

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