John Pennington makes the case for a change in the Tennessee Volunteers’ football philosophy.

Like any good argument, Pennington’s starts by establishing a solid factual premise. The stats, he says, clearly show that the Volunteer football program is on the decline:

• The Johnny Majors Era. From 1985 to 1992, Tennessee got blown out (defined as losing by 13 points or more) only once every season on average.
• The Phillip Fulmer Era, Part I. From 1992 to 2001, the Vols got blown out, on average, once every two and a half seasons.
• The Phillip Fulmer Era, Part II. Since 2002, the Vols are being blown out about twice per season.

Having established the first premise, Pennington sets up the second, that the reason for the decline is a failure to adapt to changing times:

But I do believe that Fulmer needs to realize that the game has “caught up” with him a bit. Since the Vols’ terrible 2nd half vs LSU in 2001 (that cost them a slot in the BCS National Title Game), the Vols have gone from GREAT to GOOD.

In other words, what worked with Manning & Lewis, Martin & Henry and Shuler & Garner… hasn’t worked as well with Clausens, Houstons, and Riggs running many of the same plays. (Those are all good players, but they’re not early-round NFL draft pick-type players).

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This isn’t a unique phenomenon. Steve Spurrier ruled the SEC roost for nearly a decade, only to see the rest of the league catch up to him around the turn of the century… dropping his Gators to a yearly 9-2 level. (Still quite good, but not a National Title contender.) Rather than adjust, Spurrier fled to the pros. Now that he’s back in the SEC, will he adjust his system to match his talents? We’ll see.

Pennington then concludes that Coach Fulmer should remedy the failure to adapt to the times by reconsidering his football philosophy. Perhaps a “tweak,” sort of like Joe Paterno’s, whose chucking of the I-don’t-play-freshman world view has led to Penn State’s best start in years.

Or perhaps something more drastic, like Bear Bryant’s legendary 1971 scrapping of Alabama’s traditional offensive scheme in favor of the wishbone, which Pennington said “was equivalent to the Mississippi River running backwards.”

Pennington’s conclusion:

The point is this, if a coach isn’t moving forward, he’s moving backward. The coaches with the greatest longevity and success are the ones who are able to re-invent themselves (or at least “tweak” their systems) when there are signs of cracks in the foundation.

I believe the stats above show cracks in the foundation. The SEC and the nation are catching up to Phillip Fulmer. Will he be willing to make some changes? Or will he suffer the consequences of standing still?

Time will tell.

I don’t want to get negative about the Tennessee Volunteers, but this is just too good to pass up.

GoVolsXtra this morning quoted Coach Phillip Fulmer as saying, “We’ve always prided ourselves in being a chameleon offense, where we can do a lot of things. Right now, we’re not doing anything consistent enough.’”

Okay, insert your own joke.

Here’s mine:

Chameleon? Yeah, because you can’t see it when it’s on the field.

UPDATE: Voluminous has a picture. If look very closely, you might be able to see a first down. Or maybe not.

Another update to the Thoughts and Prayers for Tennessee Volunteer Jason Allen post.

GoVolsXtra (subscription required) is reporting that they have learned from a source that “Allen suffered a dislocated hip and will be on crutches up to six weeks, but that surgery will not be required.”

If true, the fact that Allen’s injury won’t require surgery makes it less serious than Bo Jackson’s hip injury. Bo Jackson’s football career ended after his hip-replacement surgery in 1991. He was able to resume a career in baseball, but he was never the same.

Allen’s hip injury is also believed to be less serious than that of former Volunteer Deon Grant’s, who missed his entire first year in the NFL after fracturing his hip during training camp. He came back the year after that and has started 69 consecutive games for the Carolina Panthers.

Of course, both Bo Jackson and Deon Grant had already signed NFL contracts when they suffered their respective injuries. Allen will need to be even better than he was before in order to overcome the cloud the injury places on his draft stock, so continue to pray that he recovers quickly as well as completely.

NOTE: Scroll to the bottom for the latest updates and Jason’s email address so you can send him some good cheer.

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If you’re wondering what cornerback Jason Allen means to the Tennessee Volunteer Football team, well, just have a look at this picture, taken just after Allen failed to get up after making a tackle in Saturday’s game against Georgia:

When he still didn’t get up after about ten minutes, the entire team gathered in prayer:

I was sitting in the same seats last year when, again just before halftime, Erik Ainge suffered a season-ending injury to his shoulder.

That was bad.

This was worse.

We see injuries all the time. Some of them even cut short a promising college football career.

But Jason Allen last year decided to postpone a promising and lucrative NFL career to come back and play for the Vols. He didn’t intend to forego it.

Everything I’ve heard about Jason Allen is that he’s a solid, Christian young man with his priorities straight. A fierce competitor when the ball is snapped, he is the epitome of good sportsmanship, patting opponents on the backside after knocking the snot out of them. He is admired as much by those opponents as he is by his teammates.

Allen could have left school early and earned millions playing in the NFL this year, but instead, he chose to return to lead the Vols’ championship run. This season, he basically played two positions at once. He somehow racked up safety-like tackle statistics while also shutting down every opponent’s best receiver from his cornerback position. He’s led by example and vocally inspired the Vols’ secondary to show everyone that they are not the team’s greatest weakness, but one of the team’s strengths.

And there he was, lying on the turf. Surrounded by trainers. Both teams kneeling in prayer before a shocked-into-silence crowd of 108,000 fans and admirers. You could almost see the question on his face as he surveyed the crowd through watering eyes: Is this goodbye?

There’s not much information available yet about the extent of Allen’s injury. The Volunteer Nation and football fans everywhere are praying that it’s not a serious as the bent backwards, sideways twisted collision made it appear.

Tennessee fans enjoyed watching Jason Allen play four and a half games in a Volunteer uniform this season. If it’s his last for the Vols, quite frankly, that’s okay.

Just pray that being a Vol hasn’t cost him a career.

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I’ve searched but haven’t found a very good place to leave comments for Jason. If you have any encouraging words, please post them by clicking on the “comments” link below. If you know of a better place, let me know, and I’ll direct readers there. Any gripes about the game in the comments for this post will be deleted — this is not the place. This is about Jason Allen. The person.

UPDATE: Jason’s going to be okay. Don’t leave comments here anymore — you can email him directly at jallen8@utk.edu.

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Jason Allen Links

• Video Profile from GoVolsXtra.com (subscription required)