Tennessee beat Furman by 47 points.
By Sunday morning, the offensive line had ruined the holiday weekend.
The original Glen Elarbee threads survived the night, then bred, then had a litter of pups.
Before you knew it user WestTennessean opened the morning shift with a fresh one titled “OL play—WOOF.”
“Ole Glenn.”
Two words. Six seasons of unspecified coaching misconduct.
At 9:26 a.m., QualVol posted the PFF grades beneath one word:
“Yikes.”
Then came the unofficial-official infographic: Tennessee Football Offensive Line Grades (PFF): Last Five Seasons. Tennessee colors. SEC logo. Enough small print to look subpoenaed.
turkeyhunter615 supplied the grading scale after breakfast, giving the numbers the authority of a laminated safety card.
- 2021: 60.0
- 2022: 59.7
- 2023: 60.3
- 2024: 58.9
- 2025: 66.9
Five orange bars hovering around average.
The graphic proved everything. It also proved nothing. It depended on which Boarder was posting it.
FountainCityFilm, an Alcoa home inspector who had enlarged the graphic to 175 percent, noted that 60 to 70 represented an average college grade—not five future NFL starters sharing an apartment.
BookOfFulmer316 did not care.
“I don’t need PFF to tell me five 330-pound men got pushed backward by Furman. I have eyes and a television larger than the one most of you can watch.”
The television was now a credential.
Cromptons3rdRead countered with Tennessee’s rushing numbers under Josh Heupel. The Vols had led the SEC in rushing. More than once. Somebody along the line must have blocked somebody.
Mallou agreed. So did ClevelandOrange88, a retired middle-school assistant coach from Bradley County.
BookOfFulmer316 said that was Heupel’s scheme.
Cromptons3rdRead asked whether the scheme reached onto the field and moved defensive tackles itself.
BookOfFulmer316 told him to watch the film.
Crompton asked which film.
BookOfFulmer316 stopped answering him.
The grudge was older than the discussion. They had been sniping at each other since a 2023 argument over whether Joe Milton threw the ball too hard. Neither remembered the original point. Both remembered who got more likes.
TullahomaVFL, sensing exposed wiring, wandered in:
“Only Year Six. Everybody knows you can’t judge an offensive-line coach until Year Seven.”
Matt4RockyTop said the year stopped mattering after three.
ChickenTyndals said the experiment should have ended long ago, then added that Elarbee merely needed more time.
Three people recognized the joke. Four did not. By 9:43 they were arguing sincerely with both of them.
OldBullsGapVol tried to calm everyone down.
“It’s one game. Let the season play out.”
This was the same Old Bull who had declared Saturday night that Elarbee would never be held accountable because he was Josh Heupel’s friend, then said he could be held accountable.
Old Bull explained that these positions were entirely consistent.
Nobody asked how. Old Bull had been through the 2007 Message Board Wars. He knew things.
The thread reopened an older Tim Banks case. One side accused the other of carrying water for Elarbee just as they had for Banks. The Banks defenders denied ever defending Banks. Receipts were offered.
FountainCityFilm had them.
Of course he did.
He kept old screenshots in folders labeled by coordinator and betrayal.
HallsHighDad, an HVAC tech who played guard until his junior year in 1991, said the line was soft. Nobody finished blocks. The younger generation had confused standing near a defender with blocking him.
“Put your shoulder in his chest and drive the bastard somewhere he didn’t intend to go.”
HallsHighDad offered no statistics.
This made him one of the thread’s leading authorities.
The debate moved to player development. Critics said Elarbee had not developed a center in six years and relied on transfers who arrived already assembled. Defenders said it did not matter whether a lineman came from high school, the portal or descended from heaven holding a helmet. If he could play, he could play.
HardinValleyDad, a commercial lender with a color-coded spreadsheet, answered with Situation A and Situation B. Each contained five high-school linemen, five portal linemen, two million dollars and a final accounting of good players versus duds.
KidzBop38 checked the arithmetic and approved.
The Board had created a defense-acquisition model for guards.
Nobody knew what Tennessee had paid anybody. The numbers remained extremely precise.
By noon, PFF had been declared a fraudulent, for-profit enterprise incapable of grading players accurately.
tacticalvol asked, “What about pass blocking?” and briefly started a separate fire.
Nine minutes later, somebody used PFF to prove Nic Moore would be fine.
This was not considered a contradiction. It was different ammunition.
TellicoFlyfish21 worried more about Elarbee’s evaluations than his coaching. The thread rolled through pass blocking, run blocking, wide splits, transfer evaluations, Cooper Mays, Darnell Wright, two other Mays boys and whether Tennessee’s rushing success belonged to Heupel, Elarbee or the lawful owners of the football.
Everyone agreed on one point: the line had not played well enough against Furman.
This was intolerable because Tennessee would eventually play Texas.
Georgia Tech came first, but the Board had used up its available fear. Texas was larger and therefore more useful.
By midafternoon, Elarbee was a bad developer, a good pass-blocking coach, a beneficiary of Heupel’s scheme, a victim of unfair expectations, a certified troll and possibly the only man in Knoxville unable to see what six retirees had diagnosed before lunch.
Tennessee moved the ball.
The Board moved six years of grudges forward.
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