Will Tennessee and Phil Fulmer Be Better in 2007?

With ten losses over the last two seasons, the Tennessee Volunteers and their coach, Phil Fulmer look to right the ship or face sinking into the sea of irrelevancy in college football's deepest conference, the SEC. After winning a national championship in 1998 and competing for league honors the next couple of seasons, the Volunteers have been on a downward spiral that has hit rock bottom the last two seasons. While last season's nine wins was a good building block, nine wins gets you fired up in RockyTop land and Phil Fulmer knows it. The burning question for him and his Volunteer team is, do they have the talent and speed to compete in the new SEC.

Over the last three seasons, the SEC has revamped itself with coaches like Urban Meyer and Les Miles improving already great teams. And Tennessee killer, Steve Spurrier leading the charge at South Carolina. These teams run up and down the field on offense and defense and have recreated the model for what success looks like in the SEC. Outside of Tommy Tuberville's Auburn squad, the mold for champions has changed to a speed first, high scoring attack that has left other teams in the dust playing yesterday's brand of 21-14 football. Today in the SEC, teams have to score 35 points on a bad day in order to have a chance at winning.

And that may be Tennessee's biggest problem. With the firing of Randy Sanders at the end of 2005's dreadful season, Phil Fulmer was forced to realize that he had to change or the game was going to pass him and his Volunteer team by. An old school lineman, Fulmer prefers the line up and hit your opponent in the mouth style of football. But against Florida and LSU, the Tennessee team was trying to hit an opponent that had already gotten past them, leaving the once proud team in the dust.

With Tennessee football, both men's and women's at all-time highs in popularity, Phil Fulmer and his Volunteer players have one season to get it right or else the Tennessee faithful who pack Neyland Stadium in 100,000 strong every Saturday will be dancing Rocky Top on Fulmer's grave at the end of the '07 season. With a squad returning only half its starters, and none of its wide receivers, the young Volunteers will have to get real good in a hurry or else the hole will be too deep to dig out of by the middle of October. With California and Florida, two of the first three games, the Volunteers could be facing a make or break game against Georgia when the two teams play on October 6. If Fulmer loses all three do not be surprised if he is finished the Monday following the Georgia game.

If Tennessee is to right the ship several things have to happen. The first of which is Erik Ainge needs to get healthy and become the football player everyone thought he would be when he signed with Tennessee four years ago. A gifted passer and signalcaller, Erik Ainge has yet to play up to his All-American potential, frustrating fans and coaches along the way who have been waiting for him to have that break out game that defines a career. It is not that Ainge has played bad. But when Ainge has been good his surrounding cast has been bad. And when Ainge has played bad, the team has played worse. And Tennessee cannot afford for that to happen this season. After knee surgery this spring, Ainge had better heal and get on the field this summer to throw to a new crop of receivers or face the frustration the Tennessee Volunteers fans experienced last season when they saw more passes dropped than the last five years combined.

Behind Ainge, running backs Arian Foster and LaMarcus Coker will provide stability and explosiveness the Volunteers did not have with Gerald Riggs. Now that both of these guys are healthy and experienced in playing in the SEC, watch for them to have to ring up over 1,700 yards in tandem. If they are able to do that, the pressure will be taken off of Ainge and he will be able to follow his reads and make the throws Phil Fulmer knows he can make. If they do not, Ainge will be running for his life and Fulmer will be fighting for his.

On the defensive side, for the first time in the last five or six, the defense will not be the most talented part of the team. After losing several players to graduation and the NFL, the Volunteers will look to rebuild a defense that carried the offense the last two seasons keeping the Volunteers in games they should have been blown out of. With their linebacker corps suffering hits as well as having to replace three of the four starters in the secondary, the Tennessee offense will have to score a lot of points to make up for the points the defense is sure to give up in the score happy SEC.

Do not be surprised if 2007 looks a lot like 2006. Tennessee may be a better team this year than last but it might not show up in the won-loss column as the immaturity on defense coupled with the youth on offense will hurt the Volunteers early in the season and with potential losses at both California and Florida, the season may be over before it gets started. And if that happens, the longest tenured coach in the SEC will be looking for a new job.