Tag Archives: Derek Dooley

Tennessee fired Derek Dooley this weekend, Auburn’s Gene Chizik sits on the hot seat, and Alabama’s Nick Saban said he realizes he’s not that far away from the same trouble.

“I fully understand that two years from now if we don’t continue to have a good team, then I’ll be in the same seat that other people are in now,” Saban said today at his regular news conference. “It’s the nature of the beast in our profession.”

Dooley spent three seasons at Tennessee. He worked for Saban as an assistant coach for five years at LSU and two with the Miami Dolphins.

“There’s a lot of attention to what we do,” Saban said. “I think there’s a high expectation for what we do. Derek Dooley is a good friend. He’s been very, very loyal for seven years working on our staff. Regardless of what he did or didn’t do at Tennessee, he’s still someone who is a professional colleague and a good friend who we would love to help in any way we can.”

As for Chizik, Saban said, “I personally think Gene Chizik has done a really good job.”

“All I know is playing against him, it’s always a tough game,” Saban said. “They’re always well coached and they’re always well prepared, and that’s all I can really comment about. I think that sometimes that the standard that everybody wants all of us to play to is not something that is a continuum. It’s a process that’s constantly evolving and sometimes you get a few things that happen maybe that don’t go in your favor, it can affect the kind of results that you get. And some of them you can control and some of them you can’t. Whether I like it or not, it is the world that we
live in.”

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One of the fun things about covering a game in Knoxville is listening to sports radio on the way out of town the next morning. If Tennessee loses, the callers aren’t happy.

After getting bopped by Alabama 44-13, the home fans are upset. Especially since the Vols haven’t won but one SEC game in their last 12 attempts. Especially since about 30,000 Alabama fans held seats inside Neyland Stadium on Saturday night.

Here are some of the highlights from the callers for FM-99.1, which bills itself as the “Sports Animal”:

–It’s time for Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley to go and he should take defensive coordinator Sal Sunseri to go. Just because they coached for Nick Saban, it doesn’t mean they can coach like Nick Saban.

–A program like Tennessee deserves a better coach than a “stop-gap” like Derek Dooley.

–Tennessee should fire Dooley now because after the season, other programs like Arkansas and Kentucky are going to be looking for coaches and Tennessee can’t afford to get left out in the cold.

–Tennessee probably will beat Kentucky, but beating Vanderbilt is a lost cause. (When has that been said about any SEC football team in the last 50 years?)

–Allowing Alabama take so many seats inside Neyland may be the final straw for Dooley, as it was for Phillip Fulmer when Tide fans “took over” Neyland in a 2008 win over the Vols.

–The play-caller, Jim Chaney, is awful. Too many deep passes and not enough short routes.

–The play-caller is wonderful, but the quarterback, Tyler Bray, is awful.

–Bray should’ve come out afterward to talk to reporters. (He declined.) If you aren’t man enough to talk to the press, then you’re not man enough to play quarterback for Tennessee.

–Of all those four- and five-star recruits who have been brought to Knoxville in the last few years, almost all of them have either not panned out or are underachieving.

I thought that particular caller made an excellent point. I’ve always believed Saban’s biggest strength isn’t as a recruiter but as an evaluator of talent. He knows which four- and five-star players to bring to campus.

No caller this morning suggested letting Dooley’s stool coach the next game. After having hip surgery Oct. 9, Dooley had a stool available on the sideline Saturday night, although it didn’t appear he used it much.

Isn’t college football in Knoxville fun?

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Here are opening comments from both coaches after Saturday’s 44-13 win over Tennessee:

Nick Saban’s opening comments

“I’m really proud of how our players competed in this game. It’s a tough place to come and play, and we have a lot of respect for Tennessee’s team. They’re a really good offensive team, really big plays and explosive capabilities with their quarterback. They made some big plays on us, and that’s something we’ll need to work on. I was really proud of the way our guys competed.

“It was a hard fought game. We just kept grinding and grinding. We squandered a few opportunities at times, but I think the key to the drill was to just keep playing and play the next play, compete and be relentless in how you do it.

“When you play in a place like this, that’s what it takes. I was proud of the way our players did that. There’s obviously some things we can improve on; there always are, but our offensive line did a really good job of pushing the line of scrimmage. We were able to run the ball effectively and make some big plays in the passing game.

“We did a good job on the third down against a very good team. I’ve said it before, but every one of our scores was completed as a result of a big play. That’s something that we pride ourselves on: not giving up a lot of big plays. It was a great win for the University of Alabama. This is still a big rivalry for us. This is a big game to all of us: all of our players and all of our fans. Everybody at the university is happy that we were able to make a lot of people happy.

“I think Tennessee’s team really played hard. I think that Derek is doing a fantastic job. They have been better and better every year that we’ve played them. We were fortunate today that our defense played well enough to keep their high-powered offense to just 13 points.”

Derek Dooley’s opening comments

“We got whipped by a great football team in just about every phase. I’m really disappointed that we didn’t execute a little better on offense. That’s probably the thing I was a little surprised at. The quarterback didn’t play well. Not sure why. It’s a great defense. That’s not to take anything away from Alabama. Nobody’s really done much on them.

“I thought we’d measure up pretty good and we had some chances in the first half, didn’t capitalize. Opportunity ball we dropped. Third quarter, we were down there twice 23-10 and got a chance to keep grinding and staying in it and we take a shot on third and one and we get stuffed on fourth and one. Then we throw a pick, which was a bad throw in the next series. When you do that against this kind of team, they just keep pushing and keep pushing. That’s the what they do to most everybody and they did it to us too. That’s about the sum of the game there.”

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