Insider Reaction to Derek Dooley
Missouri announced the hiring of Derek Dooley as its offensive coordinator on Friday evening. Dooley has worked in both college football and the NFL, but is most known to SEC fans as the head coach of Tennessee from 2010-12.
Dooley went 15-21 with the Volunteers, including 4-19 in SEC play, and was fired prior to the final game of his third season. We talked to volquest.com publisher Brent Hubbs about Dooley.
What does Dooley like to do offensively?
Hubbs: “He’s been rooted in a pro style system. If you look at people he’s been around, the people he’s had around him as a head coach, it’s play-action pass, vertical passing game, take shots down the field. It’s a lot like what Missouri’s been doing as a degree.
“At Tennessee, Jim Chaney was his offensive coordinator. They had Tyler Bray, a couple of big time receivers, they liked to throw it down the field. He likes to be physical, run the ball. Fans should remember this about him: he’s spent several years with Jason Garrett and they’re really good friends and he is a really good offensive minded coach. He and Garrett have shared a ton of offensive thoughts. They’ve talked a lot of offensive football together. I’m not saying they’re going to be the Dallas Cowboys but he will have a system that is rooted in that kind of football.”
Why did things go south for him at Tennessee?
Hubbs: “Offensively his last year at Tennessee they were really good. They had a bunch of NFL players. They were really good on offense, really productive. The problem Derek Dooley had at Tennessee was he never got his defense right. When he had Justin Wilcox, who is now at Cal, they were pretty good defensively but weren’t developed offensively. Once they developed offensively, he hired Sal Sunseri: One of the greatest disasters of a coordinator that anybody’s ever hired.
“He inhertied a bad situation at Tennessee, wasn’t mature about some of it. He didn’t focus at times enough at Tennessee on the football aspect of it. When he was at Louisiana Tech, he was the AD and the head coach and when he got to Tennessee he still wanted to be the AD. He worried about what the paint on the walls looked like, if everyone was wearing the shirt they’re supposed to wear and not focused so much on football.
“When he was with Saban, they were good offensively, Garrett, good offensively, he was successful at Louisiana Tech offensively. It didn’t work at Tennessee because he got caught up too much in the minutiae, didn’t focus enough on football. Their biggest problem his last year at Tennessee was the defense.”
Any other reaction to the news?
Hubbs: “I can understand how Odom was impressed with Derek Dooley in an interview. He is as organized as can be. I guarantee you he came in with a Power Point presentation, he came in with all kinds of charts and graphs. I guarantee you he interviewed well. That’s Derek Dooley.”