Albert Haynesworth writes in Players' Tribune essay 'worst is over' for Tennessee Vols

Former Tennessee football player Albert Haynesworth believes that "the worst is over" for Vols fans after they endured a 4-8 season, a coaching change and an athletic director change.

The Players' Tribune on Tuesday published an essay by Haynesworth, the former defensive tackle who finished his UT career in 2001 before playing 10 seasons in the NFL, including seven with the Tennessee Titans.

In his essay, he applauded Tennessee's December hires of Phillip Fulmer as athletic director and Jeremy Pruitt as coach.

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"Tennessee football won’t be the same old sorry thing in 2018," Haynesworth wrote.

He described Fulmer, his former coach, as being "like a father to me" and wrote that "as long as Coach Fulmer is leading the athletic department, we’ll have a team that’s playing for something."

Tennessee's eight losses in 2017 marked the most in program history. The Vols went 0-8 in SEC play. John Currie fired Butch Jones on Nov. 12, kicking off a bumbling 26-day coaching search that cost Currie his job.

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"Every day I would wake up and hear about a different candidate," Haynesworth wrote. "It was just a never-ending nightmare."

But, Haynesworth wrote, UT fans "got what we wanted" in the end — a new coach and Fulmer in charge of the athletic department.

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Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Tennessee's four wins in 2017 were the fewest in program history. It has been corrected to say that UT's eight losses in 2017 were the most in program history.