Fulmer's focus on rest of season

Photo by Michael Patrick

Tennessee head coach Phillip Fulmer watches as his team gets beat 59-20 by Florida Saturday in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville.

Callers have jammed switchboards on talk radio.

Internet servers are smoking from all the posts on message boards.

Columnists have delivered opinions.

A season-opening loss for Tennessee at then-No. 12 Cal got it all started, and a 39-point loss to then-No. 5 Florida two weeks ago threw gasoline on the grill.

But with eight games remaining in the regular season, the man amid all the hoopla — UT coach Phillip Fulmer — is doing his best to ignore the criticism and focus on the remainder of the season.

“You haven’t seen any difference in my demeanor, I don’t think,” Fulmer said this week. “I’m not going to walk around with my head down. I’m going to work, like I’ve always done. We work hard. We’ve done it the right way. Kids graduate, go to school, haven’t had our name in the paper for anything serious in a long time. We’re trying to get back to where we want to be.”

Fulmer knows that passion and interest are part of coaching. He welcomes it, even. But it doesn’t mean he’s immune to the often harsh criticism that has accompanied the unranked Vols’ 2-2 start.

“I deal with it in a real way that you have to deal with it, and that’s what I can control,” Fulmer said. “What I can’t control, I don’t worry about. My administration has been very supportive, I’ve got a great group of good friends and trustees and people that have their wits about them.

“I understand the frustration and the passion. That’s a good thing that people care that much. It’s just a matter of I don’t listen to that stuff. Your wife or the coaches wives, you worry about those folks. But it’s a tough profession that way sometimes.”

The criticism has even filtered down to the players, who have supported their coach when asked.

“We are behind coach Fulmer 100 percent,” offensive guard Anthony Parker said following the Florida loss. “That’s our coach, and we love to play for our coach. We’re going to go out here for these next (eight) games and try to win them all.”

In a perfect world, the Vols wouldn’t face a pair of top 10 teams in their first three games. They’d also be a lot better off in terms of experience.

In the secondary, UT has three first-time starters, two of which are first-year players. It’s a different group than the one the Vols coaching staff envisioned, with Demetrice Morley (academics) and Roshaun Fellows (team rules) being dismissed before spring practice. Cornerback Inky Johnson would also have been a starter were it not for the career-ending injury he suffered in UT’s second game last season.

Both Cal and Florida exploited UT’s inexperienced secondary with talented skill players for big plays, and the Vols rank 91st in the country in total defense and 81st against the run.

Tennessee’s run game hasn’t lived up to expectations, either, and ranks 77th in the country with an average of 132.3 yards per game, That, combined with the end results of losses to Cal, now ranked No. 6, and Florida, now at No. 4, has fired up the fan base.

“You’ve got to go back and you’ve got to look and focus and say why? We’re youthful in spots; we’ve had some injuries, obviously,” he said. “In the defensive front, we’ve had some really good development and we’ve had some guys that really haven’t gotten to the point we thought they would be. They’re coming really well now.”

Where the Vols — and their fans — want to be is back on top of the SEC and back in the national conversation.

It’s been eight seasons since Tennessee last won a conference championship, although UT made trips to the championship game in 2001 and 2004, losing to LSU and Auburn, respectively.

The best way to get there hasn’t changed, either, says Fulmer. But that doesn’t mean methods haven’t been scrutinized and tweaked along the way.

“When we say stay the course, that doesn’t mean that you’re not evaluating everything and changing what you need to change and looking as to where you can be better in any phase, offensively, defensively or in the kicking game,” Fulmer said. “But we don’t panic. We don’t go out and say, ‘We’ve got to change everything to please the fans or please the media,’ and that’s why we’ve been successful. When we’ve had bumps in the road, we’ve fought through them.”

The last time Tennessee faced a bump this big to start a season was in 2000, when it began 2-3 and won its final six games of the regular season to finish 8-3 before losing to Kansas State in the Cotton Bowl.

That season, Tennessee bounced between quarterbacks A.J. Suggs and Joey Mathews before finally settling on starter Casey Clausen and had to replace several major contributors from the 1998 and 1999 teams.

In 2005, the Vols lost four consecutive games in the middle of their schedule and five of their last seven to finish 5-6, Fulmer’s only losing season as a head coach since he permanently took over the program in 1993.

The howling was just as bad then, but the Vols bounced back to finish 9-4 last season.

And four games into this season, Tennessee is close to where it needs to be, Fulmer says.

“This team, we’re getting there,” Fulmer said. “We’re getting to the point where we can say we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our kids are fighting like heck. I mean they’re really battling to be where we want them to be. They don’t want to be giving up 10 big plays a game or an interception for a score or a fumble for a score. It’s a very prideful place, and that’s the reason we will turn it around.”

UT athletic director Mike Hamilton’s stated expectations for the football program are to play for the SEC championship four years in every 10 and win two.

To reach the championship game this year, UT needs Florida to lose twice — and it needs to take care of its seven remaining conference games beginning with Saturday’s game against No. 15 Georgia.

That’s a tough task, considering five of those seven teams (Georgia, Arkansas, South Carolina, Alabama and Kentucky) are either ranked or have been ranked at one point this season. Of the other two, Mississippi State upset Auburn on the road earlier this season and Vanderbilt is two years removed from defeating the Vols in Neyland Stadium.

For now, the best way Fulmer sees to secure the big picture is to focus on the eight smaller ones from now until the end of November.

“My goal is to be the best team we can and beat Georgia, and then whoever’s after that, we’ll concern ourselves with that,” Fulmer said. “But get better, so that long term we get better and get ourselves back in the championship mix.”

Drew Edwards covers University of Tennessee football. He may be reached at 865-342-6274.

© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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