Five Takeaways from the Tennessee Football Vols 45-6 Outback Bowl Victory Over the Northwestern Wildcats
The 2015 Tennessee football team finished 9-4 with a 45-6 Outback Bowl win over the Northwestern Wildcats. Here are five takeaways from the Volunteers’ win.
It is the best season for the Vols since 2007. Butch Jones’s squad ended the year with a bang, dominating the Northwestern Wildcats 45-6.
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The Outback Bowl victory should be enough for Tennessee to finish the season in the Top 25, and it was a great statement win too.
After an up and down year that really hit a low point early in the season, winning the Outback Bowl was a great way for the Vols to finish off 2015.
It assured that they would meet expectations this year and be in position for bigger and better things next year.
The Wildcats, meanwhile, were 10-2 and ranked in the Top 15, making this a quality win for the Vols. Here are five takeaways from their victory on New Year’s Day.
1. The Defense is deep and smart
This was a year in the making, but the Vols finished the season as a very elite defensive football team thanks to the development of players.
We knew that Cameron Sutton, Brian Randolph, Jalen Reeves-Maybin, and Derek Barnett were elite weapons who would dominate.
But against Northwestern, Darrin Kirkland Jr., Corey Vereen, Emmanuel Moseley, Malik Foreman, and Evan Berry came along and all made names for themselves. Kahlil McKenzie emerged as a star as well.
John Jancek’s unit has really come a long way since the beginning of the year. The young defense showed on Saturday how loaded it is.
2. Joshua Dobbs is at his best when given free reign
Butch Jones and Mike DeBord have hopefully learned that Joshua Dobbs might just be the greatest improviser of all quarterbacks in college football.
Dobbs put that on full display against the Northwestern Wildcats.
On a third down play in the second half, he fumbled a snap but then picked it up and ran it in for a touchdown. This is vintage Joshua Dobbs.
In a rigid spread offense with specific plays designed, Dobbs is at his best when things break down. He had 166 passing yards and 48 rushing yards in the Outback Bowl, and he ran for two touchdowns, displaying vision better than many running backs.
Jones and DeBord should let Dobbs play loose and have fun because that is when he thrives. However, he’d be better at it if he could fix one thing…
3. Joshua Dobbs Needs to Work on Accurate throws Downfield
There are a lot of good things to say about Joshua Dobbs as he closed out his junior year, and he has only gotten better as a quarterback over his first full year as a starter.
But for all of his greatness, he still has a major weakness: throwing downfield from the pocket.
Most of Dobbs’s great plays came on designed short passes or impressive runs. Dobbs is still very inaccurate when he throws downfield from the pocket.
Yes, he did hit Alex Ellis twice over the middle, but Ellis was wide open both times. And the passes were not that deep.
With Tennessee’s elite receivers, Dobbs should be able to throw better downfield balls to give guys like Josh Malone a chance to make a play. He doesn’t have Peyton Manning accuracy, but he could mimic Tee Martin and Heath Shuler in this regard: throwing a beautiful deep ball to let his receivers make a big play.
4. The Offensive Line is in great shape
With the exception of Coleman Thomas, the offensive line gets an A+ for how it performed in the Outback Bowl. Thomas unfortunately gave up a sacks, had a penalty, and had too many low snaps.
However, he still did a very good job blocking outside of that one sack, and the rest of the line was perfect. This is a unit that has a future as great as any unit in college football.
Kyler Kerbyson was great all year and will be a huge loss, but the entire line was awesome against the Wildcats. The depth of the unit has only gotten better, and the process was sped up with injuries to guys like Jashon Robertson.
It showed as the line shut down an elite Northwestern defensive front, running down the Wildcats’ throat and giving Dobbs plenty of protection throughout the evening with just a few exceptions.
Jones and his staff had the toughest job in football in revamping the entire line in 2014 after Derek Dooley’s idiotic decision not to recruit an offensive lineman in 2012. And they did a great job of it in the process, as the unit has grown significantly since then.
More volunteers: Vols Destroy Northwestern in the Outback Bowl
5. Jalen Hurd is the heart of the offense
We have known this for two years ever since the five-star set foot on campus in the summer of 2014, but Jalen Hurd showed his greatness in this Outback Bowl.
Going into the game, the story was about the toughness of the Northwestern Wildcats against the speed of the Vols, a classic SEC vs Big Ten match-up.
The Vols did have the speed, true enough. But at the heart of the win was Jalen Hurd, who showed they have the toughness as well.
Hurd ran 24 times for 130 yards and a touchdown, and he only increased his per-carry average as he wore down that elite Northwestern rush defense in the second half. There is the particular drive we will all remember, where Hurd shoved off two tacklers on one play and shed another to break off a long run the very next play.
Despite all of the elite weapons at the skill positions, the bread and butter for the Vols remains the tough running game. And it showed throughout this game. So much for a finesse team running a spread.
Jones has built a program based on toughness as well.