Tennessee football: Five potential concerns over Shelton Felton as Vols OLB coach

3. College programs faring better without him

The Akron Zips are just one example. But Shelton Felton has a history of college programs failing to improve upon the previous year once he arrived and doing better the year after he left. To be fair, it’s a small sample size, as Felton has only been a part of three college programs to this point, but it’s still a relevant issue that anybody looking at his track record should bring up.

Let’s start with his two years as an assistant for the Chattanooga Mocs in 2016 and 2017. Chattanooga went 9-4 and won the Southern Conference the year before he got there. They matched their record with him in 2016 but failed to win the conference. The next year, as Tom Arth replaced Russ Huesman, they fell to 3-8. Then he left Chattanooga, and they improved to 6-5.

When Felton left Chattanooga, he joined Jeremy Pruitt’s first Tennessee football staff as a quality control coach. The Vols only improved upon their worst season in history from the previous year under Butch Jones by one game, going from 4-8 to 5-7. But after Felton left, UT went from 5-7 to 8-5 this past year, showing another season of dramatic improvement.

While the Vols were showing improvement, Felton was going 0-12 as a part of Arth’s inaugural staff at Akron. They went 4-8 the previous year. Now, to be fair, we should note that each of Felton’s past three seasons were with a first-year coaching staff. And he won a lot as a high school coach. But these are concerns worth bringing up if we’re being honest.