Tennessee football: Butch Jones shouldn’t get chance to save himself

Tennessee football head coach Butch Jones is still leading the Volunteers after a 3-4 start. But he should not get the chance to save himself.

John Currie already waited too long. Tennessee football should have fired Butch Jones Sunday, right after the Vols’ 45-7 loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide. If he knows he’s going to fire Jones eventually, why not do it immediately?

It never makes sense to wait to fire a coach. However, the Vols are doing just that with Jones, and as a result, they’ve allowed another narrative to creep in.

Joe Rexrode’s Voices of the SEC podcast has now raised the possibility of a Jones resurgence starting with Kentucky. That almost builds off of Jones’s talk of a five-game playoff and Guarantano’s prediction of a ‘magical finish’ to the season.

Here’s the problem: Nothing Jones does should be able to save his job. Sorry, but even if Tennessee football wins out and finishes 9-4 again, he should be gone.

Heck, even if they win every game by 25 points, Jones should not get the chance to stay on.

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I said in this post before the year began that eight to 10 wins should be enough for Jones to stay safe. I even added that seven to nine wins saves him but puts him firmly on the hot seat, depending on where the wins came. However, that assumed a few things.

It assumed that Florida would not have so many key players suspended and no quarterback to speak of when facing the Vols. It also assumed LSU would be more of a threat.

Well, LSU may or may not be a threat. But Jones’s loss to Florida is inexcusable in every way, and because he didn’t redeem himself against Alabama or Georgia, he has to be gone.

The home loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks wasn’t in the picture either. However, Alabama was his final chance.

As a result, my analysis has all been amended. Jones should not have any chance to keep his job because he blew far too many opportunities. And now, it’s going to get harder and harder for Tennessee football to rebound under him.

The announcement of former commit Brendon Harris’s now commitment to the Vanderbilt Commodores shows how hard it’s getting. How can anybody expect the Vols to get back under Jones with the jury’s in?

Recruiting is going to continue to suffer because he has nothing to sell. The program will eventually continue to fall downhill. And he’s proven time and time again that he’s not a good enough in-game coach to make up for the bad recruits.

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So let’s stop giving him chances. Jones did lots of good things to help restore Tennessee football. But he’s now in a situation that he can’t crawl out of. As a result, the Vols should not give him any chance to sell being able to keep his job. They needed to fire him Sunday.