Tennessee football: Indiana helped cause Butch Jones demise with Vols

In 2017, the Indiana Hoosiers hired Mike DeBord away from the Volunteers. That helped cause the demise of Butch Jones with Tennessee football.

As Tennessee football gets set to face the Indiana Hoosiers in the Gator Bowl, they are facing a program that last made a bowl in 2016, just like the Vols. But the aftermath of that, ironically, appeared to have a negative impact on both programs for opposite reasons.

Indiana parted ways with Kevin Wilson before the bowl, and that’s when Tom Allen took over. He lost the Foster Farms Bowl, but one of Allen’s first moves after that was luring Mike DeBord away from Rocky Top to be his offensive coordinator.

It appeared to be a coup at the time. The best two years Tennessee football has enjoyed this decade just happened to be the two years DeBord was offensive coordinator, in 2015 and 2016, when they finished 9-4 and in the top 25 each time.

Now, yes, Joshua Dobbs had something to do with that. But you can’t ignore the fact that they have no more than seven wins and no top 25 finishes outside of those two years in the 2010s. It has to mean something.

Well, for the Vols, it meant a lot. Jones decided to promote his tight ends coach, Larry Scott, to offensive coordinator. Scott had prior head coaching experience but no experience ever as a coordinator of any offense. And he turned down a chance to bring in Mark Helfrich because of his incessant stubbornness to stick to his system.

With a starting quarterback race between Quinten Dormady and Jarrett Guarantano, a race Dormady initially won, this was not the year to experiment with a new offensive coordinator. And it showed in the 2017 season.

It all started with horrific play-calling on three drives into the red zone against the Florida Gators that resulted in a grand total of three points, including two drives inside the 10 when they didn’t run it once despite John Kelly dominating. Things only got worse.

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There was a period of time in the middle of that year, which his the worst year in the modern ear of UT history, when the Vols went multiple games without scoring touchdowns. They were scoreless for six straight quarters and went three and a half games without scoring an offensive touchdown. It was disastrous.

Scott and Jones tried to scapegoat Dormady after a 41-0 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs at home by going to Jarrett Guarantano, but after a bye week, it didn’t get any better. By the way, Dormady just played for the MAC Championship as a starter, and we see what Guarantano is doing. That show how badly these two mismanaged both quarterbacks.

So without DeBord, Tennessee football collapsed, and it resulted in the firing of Jones. However, Indiana only had DeBord for two years, and they were 5-7 both years. He was gone by this year, and they have now gone 8-4. Simply put, while losing DeBord wrecked Jones and the Vols, gaining him did not help Indiana.

This is a major connection the two schools share. If Indiana did not lure DeBord away, the Vols probably could have had a better offense in 2017, and that would have at least meant wins over Florida, the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Kentucky Wildcats. At that point, Jones may have kept his job. But losing DeBord changed everything.