Former Tennessee football quarterback Heath Shuler said he thinks the Volunteers can play in the SEC Championship Game in 2016.
With his alma mater featuring a senior quarterback in Joshua Dobbs who most closely resembles his style of play, Heath Shuler is putting his faith back in Tennessee football.
The former Vol, who finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1993 and was a two-year starter, said at the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame Dinner & Induction Ceremony Tuesday that he thinks the 2016 Vols can meet expectations, according to a report on KnoxNews.
The report also suggests that Shuler still can’t get over the fact he did not play in the title game. Of course, his first year as a starter in 1992, the Vols were in prime position to get there.
They had gotten to 5-0 and beaten the Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs to get as high as No. 4 in the country. But then they lost three straight games by one possession, two of which were by one point each to the then-SEC newcomers South Carolina Gamecocks and Arkansas Razorbacks, neither of whom finished with a winning record that year.
The other loss was to the eventual national champion Alabama Crimson Tide by a touchdown, but if Tennessee just wins one of those other two games, they would have been in Birmingham, where the initial SEC Championship game was played.
That was obviously the three-game losing streak that cost Johnny Majors his job and reshaped the future of Tennessee football.
The next year, the Vols went 6-1-1 in the conference, but the SEC East came down to a 41-34 shootout loss to Florida. At least then they could say it wasn’t a choke job. After all, that was an elite Florida team, and the game was in The Swamp.
But it’s nice to see Shuler still involved with Tennessee football, and his faith in the Vols is something to be excited about.