Tennessee football: 4 best Vols coaches with losing seasons their first year

And cue all the panic. Yes, Butch Jones is one of the most successful Tennessee football head coaches who had a losing record his first year. Sorry, but you can’t ignore the fact that he had back to back nine-win seasons with Top 25 finishes.

His first year, Jones went 5-7 largely due to two unfortunate things: a bad decision to start Nathan Peterman against the Florida Gators over Justin Worley and then an injury to Worley against the Alabama Crimson Tide. If Worley starts all year, the Vols beat Florida and the Vanderbilt Commodores to go 5-7.

I can sell Jones by pointing out that he beat the Georgia Bulldogs two years in a row, had one year in which he beat Florida and Georgia both while ending an 11-game losing streak to Florida, and in 2015 was four plays away from going undefeated. All of those things are true.

He had a record-setting sack getter in Derek Barnett and gave Rocky Top two fun years of great offense with Joshua Dobbs, Josh Malone and Alvin Kamara. Now, it’s also certainly true that Jones was a horrible in-game decision maker, he misevaluated and misused far too much talent and he forced too many players into his system even if it wasn’t a right fit.

Jones’s stubbornness was ridiculous. Fans were glad to see him gone in the end. But he was more successful than many other UT coaches who had losing records their first year, and that’s why he made the list.