The Bad:
Chaney is a better coordinator that many fans realize.
I know that a lot of people hate him, but Jim Chaney is a good offensive coordinator. Great, no. But good, absolutely. There is a reason that another SEC University just made him the highest paid OC in the entire of college football. He’s pretty decent at what he does. Chaney is a good play caller, despite what some fans seem to think and he’s a very good game planner. There is little doubt that Georgia has almost always had a good game plan on offense over the past few years.
The issue Chaney has is in being adaptable when his plan doesn’t work. That doesn’t happen very often when you have a team as good as UGA. When you look at the team statistics, Chaney put together a very good offense this year. The Dawgs averaged 466 yards a game and were incredibly balanced this season. 239 yards of those were on the ground and 226 were through the air. If that isn’t a solid balance, then I don’t know what is.
There is also no doubt that Chaney did a good job with QB Jake Fromm. Fromm has been one of the best QB’s in the country in his first two seasons in Athens. Chaney deserves a lot of credit for that having been his position coach in his first season and coordinator both years. He’s consistently designed game plans that play to Fromm’s strengths and that isn’t always a given.
In short, there is no guarantee that Kirby Smart is going to hire a better play caller than Chaney. The Vols aren’t paying him all of that money because they are dumb. The fact remains that Chaney is one of the most respected offensive minds in college football and he’s comfortable staying as a coordinator and not going off and becoming a head man anywhere. Those guys are rare and it’s why he’s been so valuable to Kirby Smart over the past 3 years.
He’ll make a division rival better.
Look, I’d be much happier if Chaney was leaving to go to USC on the west coast or basically anywhere else. I don’t like Georgia coaches going to division rivals. It annoys me, especially when it’s a program like the Vols who now have 5 former UGA guys on staff in Chaney, Kevin Sherrer, Tracy Rocker, Will Friend, and John Lilly. That doesn’t include Jeramy Pruitt who of course was here as well for 2 years.
Chaney is also a good, if not a great recruiter. He’s been the coordinator that recruited 3 straight 5-star QB’s. It wasn’t just Kirby Smart who was responsible for that, Chaney had a lot to do with that. Now, that being said, Chaney was not out on the road like a lot of Georgia’s other coaches. He’ll do a decent job in that regards for the Vols as well and I don’t like seeing a rival poaching one of our coaches.
As I said earlier, Jim Chaney is a good coach. He’ll do a good job for the Vols and he will make them better. That salary and his experience should mean that Jeremy Pruitt respects him and gets out of Chaney’s way in a way that he didn’t with Tyson Helton. I think that Chaney is going to do a much better job than Helton did and he will make that offense better. Now, will it be good enough to beat Georgia? I don’t know about that, but the Vols got better today with this hire and I don’t like that.