Tennessee football’s 10 coaches who inherited biggest mess

You can hate Butch Jones all you want, but the fact of the matter is he did walk into a mess when he took over Tennessee football in 2013. At the time, the Vols were facing a major budget crisis, and their low APR had them in danger of NCAA penalties. Oh, and they had also suffered through three straight losing seasons for the first time since the 1909-1911.

Simply put, the program was in bad shape after Derek Dooley. Now, Jones made it worse because he attempted to install a pro-style offense out of a spread system. At that point in the SEC, teams had figured out those schemes. To make it worse, Jones did not have the personnel to run it, and then his starting quarterback, Justin Worley, suffered a season-ending injury.

Because Joshua Dobbs wasn’t ready yet, UT fell to 5-7 after a 4-3 start. Then, thanks to a depleted offensive line class, the Vols had to replace all five starters up front in 2014, giving them what was basically a second straight first year. However, with Dobbs improving, the Vols went 7-6. Then they had two straight top 25 finishes thanks to two straight top five classes.

We know now it was all a ruse. Jones could not build on his early success, and when things began to falter, they utterly collapsed. Everything he had built up fell apart due to mismanagement of talent and horrible conditioning.