Top 10 Seasons the Tennessee Vols Recovered from Losing to the Florida Gators in their History
Nov 22, 2014; Knoxville, TN, USA; A general view of Neyland Stadium home of theTennessee Volunteers following the game against the Missouri Tigers. Missouri won 29-21. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports
The Tennessee Vols football team has recovered in the past from losses to the Gators. Here are the Top 10 times the Volunteers bounced back.
When you lose a game you so desperately wanted at the beginning of the season, you can do one of two things: quit on the season and never recover or do everything you can do salvage the year.
The Tennessee Volunteers and Butch Jones have that choice laid out in front of them right now.
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Everybody in Vol Nation desperately wanted the win over the Florida Gators last Saturday, and recovering from that is going to be difficult. But we have already documented ways the Vols can salvage the season.
As much as the sky did fall last weekend, and trust that the loss will never be okay despite what happens the rest of the year, Tennessee can still recover and have a season to remember.
It has happened plenty of times before. Given that Florida has won 26 of the past 35 games and is 20-6 against the Vols since they started playing on an annual basis in 1990, there have been plenty of times in which Tennessee recovered from a terrible loss to the Gators.
And some of these seasons are the most memorable in Tennessee history.
So instead of whining about what happened last week, let’s take the loss for the travesty that it is and move on. Plenty of Vols football teams have done that in the past and seen great success in the process, going back to the years of Erik Ainge, Peyton Manning, and Heath Shuler.
To be fair, none of the bounce-backs are over the past seven years, but that is because the seasons in general have just been bad the past seven years.
Before that, Tennessee bounced back from Florida losses more times than not, honestly. Let’s take a look at the Top 10 seasons in Tennessee Vols football history where they had to recover from an early heartbreaking loss to the Florida Gators.
Next: #10: 2006 Tennessee Vols