Tennessee football: Did Vols OC Larry Scott try to be the star at Florida?

Tennessee football offensive coordinator Larry Scott made some awful calls against the Florida Gators Saturday. Was he trying to be the Volunteers’ star?

For two days, Tennessee football’s coaching staff has rightfully earned a huge amount of criticism. In fact, it’s hard to find a time when Vols fans were in so much unison against their coaches.

Butch Jones has become a symbol of coaching incompetence in close games. The Hail Mary to lose to the Florida Gators 26-20, though was only part of it.

The real criticism was on the offensive play-calling. The Vols had seven plays inside the 10-yard line, and they threw it all seven times. They had another play inside the half-yard line waived off due to a penalty.

And that was a pass play as well.

That drive ended in an interception. Their other drive inside the 10 ended in a field goal.

On another drive between the two inside the red zone, they called a play-action on third-and-one. A penalty pushed them back, then they got a sack, and that knocked them out of field goal range.

So on those three drives, they scored a grand total of three points.

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This all came despite the fact that they had a running back in John Kelly dominating the game, averaging over seven yards per carry. And on the final drive, the Florida defense was so tired that it could not bring him down without committing a penalty.

So why would Larry Scott try to get so cute inside the 10-yard line? There’s one possible explanation that could be a huge indictment against him.

Scott was trying to be the star.

This was just Scott’s third game as an offensive coordinator despite experience as an interim head coach. He clearly has something to prove.

If he runs it on the half-yard line and then runs it again late in the game, his team gets two scores. But nobody will hail him for great play-calls at that point.

Meanwhile, if the Vols execute on the calls he made inside the 10, he’s a hero. And to be fair, some of the time, the calls were right in a technical sense.

On their first drive inside the 10, he called an out-route to Josh Palmer. Palmer dropped the pass. But the play was there.

Then, on the final drive, on first down, Quinten Dormady threw a pass over the middle to Kelly inside the 10. Once again, the play was there. However, Kelly dropped it.

So if you’re just going by the play-call in a nutshell, you could make the case that the Vols didn’t execute.

However, there was no need for those plays when Kelly was your running back. Just hand the ball off to him and let him do the work.

The play is much easier to run and doesn’t require any difficult tricks to execute. Why would Scott not do that unless he wanted to get the credit for making the right call?

It was almost as if he was auditioning for his next head coaching gig, this time with the interim tag removed from his name. This looked like something NFL coordinators do all the time when trying to get a head job.

Rather than call an easy play to get the yardage you need, call a complex play that is available. And that way, if the players don’t execute, it’s on them and not you for making the bad call. But if it works, you’re a hero.

Bob Shoop does indeed deserve criticism for his defensive coaching on the final play of the game. Jones is the head-man, so he deserves a huge level of blame no matter what.

Next: Blame pie: Who's responsible for Vols' loss to Florida?

But Jones signed off on Scott’s calls. And while it may be due to incompetence on Jones’s part, Scott may have been thinking a little further ahead. Either way, it blew up in all their faces.

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Was Tennessee football OC Larry Scott trying to be the star at Florida?

By Caleb Calhoun | Sep 18, 2017

Tennessee football offensive coordinator Larry Scott made some awful calls against the Florida Gators Saturday. Was he trying to be the Volunteers’ star?