Following Tennessee football’s 15-9 loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks, Volunteers coach Butch Jones continued to highlight his ignorance on Monday.
We’ve heard champions of life, brick by brick, mental reps and five-star hearts. But amidst all of those quotes, Tennessee football head coach managed to embarrass himself beyond all imagination on Monday following the Vols’ loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks.
In a 15-9 loss coming off what Jones said was the best bye week ever, Tennessee’s fifth-year head coach managed to say his team did everything to win the South Carolina game except score touchdowns.
Seriously, that was a direct quote. You can see the full press conference by clicking on the video above.
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Did Butch Jones watch the same game everybody else did? Because if he did and still made that quote, he simply doesn’t know football. That’s all we can gather from such a quote.
The Vols had negative yards on offense for the entire second half until the final drive. They committed seven penalties on the day. Jarrett Guarantano had two fumbles that he was lucky to recover. Of course, we don’t hold that against Guarantano. As we’ve already said, the coaches set him up to fail.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the offense made tons of mistakes. One of those penalties was a delay of game that likely cost them one of those touchdowns Jones said they couldn’t score.
Another time they failed to get in the end zone was because they ran 10 seconds off the clock near the end of the game.
In what universe did they do everything to win outside of score touchdowns? Only a surface-level knowledge of football could lead you to that conclusion.
Knowing Jones the way we know him, he was likely referring to the fact that they had no turnovers. But using turnovers to measure mistakes is like only using blocked shots to measure how good of a shot contester somebody is in basketball. It’s one of many factors.
Jones, however, appears to be ignorant of that, or he’s just trying to spin what was truly a terrible loss.
Now, to be fair, Tennessee football’s 253 yards of total offense is explainable. The Vols were starting a redshirt freshman quarterback in Jarrett Guarantano against Will Muschamp’s defense. So we saw those struggles coming.
But that doesn’t mean they did everything to win the game. South Carolina outgained them by 70 yards! Nobody who watched that game would think such a thing.
And it’s just more evidence that Jones is not cut out for this. His quotes have been cheesy in the past, but this quote was damning. If anybody thinks Tennessee football’s only issue on Saturday was not getting into the end zone, that’s scary. And they should never be coaching a football game again in Knoxville.