Take Two: Why did Butch Jones fail at Tennessee?

Take Two returns with a daily offering tackling a handful of issues in the college football landscape. Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Adam Gorney lays out the situation and then receives takes from Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell and a local expert from the Rivals.com network of team sites.

MIND OF MIKE: How and where the Butch Jones era went wrong

RECRUITING: Recruits react | Five bad busts | Five bad misses | Highs and lows

HOT BOARD: Realistic guide to Vols coaching candidates

Apparently, a 50-17 road destruction at Missouri was the game that broke Butch Jones’ back at Tennessee.

After back-to-back nine-win seasons, the Volunteers took huge steps back this season and were a disappointing 4-6 this season, with all six losses coming in conference play.

Many of those games were blowouts and the wins were not all that impressive. The Vols lost on a last-second Hail Mary to Florida, lost 41-0 to Georgia, lost 45-7 to Alabama, lost to Kentucky for only the second time since 1984 and a sub-par performance Saturday night at Missouri was the final straw.

In five seasons in Knoxville, Jones finished 34-27 overall and 14-24 in SEC play. That does not cut it in the most cutthroat conference in college football. Tennessee has not had a 10-win season since 2007.

The wins and losses are obvious. But, behind-the-scenes, what exactly was it that led to Jones’ demise? Roster management is a common theme. But maybe more than anything, the Volunteers did an excellent job recruiting top players, but developing them was a completely different story.

In an autopsy of Jones’ time in Knoxville, that could be the one thing that brought him down in the end.

“The corny calendar slogans will undoubtedly be part of Butch Jones’ lasting legacy with the Vols, but what truly undid Jones at Tennessee was his inability to grasp his role as the CEO of the program. Jones preached constantly about details, yet he routinely overlooked roster management, staff continuity and player development.

“In the last five years, Tennessee has valued recruiting over developing the roster. Attrition is commonplace in college football nowadays, but it was unusually high at Tennessee. From Jones’ inaugural signing class in 2013 to date, 36 signees ultimately left the program. A few were dismissed, but most simply transferred. These included high-profile recruits like Jalen Hurd, Preston Williams and others like Vic Wharton and Riley Ferguson, who have found big success at other programs.

“The constant turnover sapped Tennessee of valuable depth - issues that came to a head during the team’s second half sputter in 2016 and its free-fall this year. Jones has also had three offensive coordinators in five years, let too many talented players leave the Volunteer State (Tee Higgins, Jacob Phillips, Chase Hayden, Tyrel Dodson) and didn’t properly develop blue-chippers like Drew Richmond, Jonathan Kongbo and others.”

“It was player development, roster management and they had some bad luck with injuries. Mostly it was player development, not utilizing a lot of strengths they had like not utilizing Alvin Kamara and going with Jalen Hurd, not utilizing an explosive receiver like Josh Malone enough. Injuries on defense took their toll and a lot of weird things coaching-wise that led to his demise. Really, player development was the key. They had so many high four-star and five-star kids that just underachieved at that program.

“They were fighting in the Alabama game and after that you saw them sort of give up. The attrition, more injuries, getting down to your third-string quarterback, not enough depth of talent and not enough development of that talent to really fight through some injuries. I watched the Alabama game and they got croaked but they were really trying and they were playing physically but after that game they started mailing it in.”