Jones understands expectations on Tennessee for this season

Expectations for Tennessee football and head coach Butch Jones are high in 2015.

The Vols are coming off of a 7-6 season (their first winning season since 2009), but by the way people are talking about the Tennessee program this offseason, you would think that the record was a lot better than that.

After Jones has posted a record of 12-13 in his first two seasons on Rocky Top, fans are hungry for more, and an exciting end to last season gave them something to cheer about.

“If you’re a competitor, you want those [expectations] placed upon you,” Jones said.

Jones has been cautiously tempering expectations from fans ever since he arrived in Knoxville, and this offseason has been no different.

But Jones has also embraced the expectations, calling them a “compliment” to how the program has developed.

“As the caretaker of Tennessee football, I also have to be a realist,” Jones said. “I have to understand where we’re at.

“We’ve had two very, very solid, very good recruiting classes back to back, but we’re still not there yet from a competitive depth standpoint. We’re still a couple recruiting classes away. But that’s why you come to Tennessee — because of the expectations. We want that.”

The expectations are present thanks to Tennessee’s strong finish to last season.

Tennessee finished the season by winning four of their final five games, including a blowout win over Iowa in the TaxSlayer Bowl to end the season.

Quarterback Josh Dobbs was a large part of the Vols’ success in those last five games.

Dobbs took over for injured quarterback Justin Worley in late October, which is when Tennessee’s season turned around.

“There is a sense of confidence,” Jones said. “This football team learned how to win.

“To me, that was the biggest obstacle. The most challenging thing in developing a program is actually learning how to win, and I thought we took monumental strides in learning how to win.”

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