Tennessee football: 5 assistant hires that got a Vols head coach fired

4. Larry Scott – 2017

Head Coach: Butch Jones

Position: Offensive Coordinator 

Tennessee football’s worst season of all time came after Butch Jones replaced Mike DeBord with Larry Scott as offensive coordinator in 2017. DeBord was the brains behind a record-setting offense the year before.

Sure, it would likely take a major step back with Joshua Dobbs, Alvin Kamara and Josh Malone leaving. But in 2017, the offense was so historically bad that Jones clearly made the wrong move. At one point, the Vols went 14 straight quarters without an offensive touchdown.

What was so bad about the Scott hire was Jones had a chance to make a splash. Mark Helfrich, the former Oregon Ducks head coach who was Chip Kelly’s offensive coordinator, was on the open market. And he had been working with Jones that offseason. His offense would have been a perfect fit, as it would have kept the spread and just gotten more dedicated to it.

But Jones, who had a fashionable system at the turn of the decade, refused to admit that teams were figuring out his pro-style offense run out of spread sets. DeBord and Dobbs saved it, but it wouldn’t last. And he hired Scott in 2017 so he could make sure his system stayed in place.

It clearly backfired. The only reason that we don’t have this one higher is because the season is more a reflection on Jones, not Scott. That’s not to let Scott off the hook. But Jones’s rigid dedication to a dying system meant that he would have eventually seen the program collapse no matter what.