Tennessee Football Blame Pie: Who Caused the Vols’ Loss to South Carolina?

Tennessee football suffered a 24-21 heartbreak at South Carolina. Here’s the blame pie for the Volunteers’ loss to the Gamecocks?

The losing streak has reached three. And Tennessee football is officially reeling. What started out as a promising season unraveled Saturday night with the Vols dropping a terrible game to the South Carolina Gamecocks.

At 5-3 overall and 2-3 in the conference, they are likely out of contention for all of their goals this year. The SEC East title is probably gone.

There is no chance at a College Football Playoff.

And Butch Jones is squarely on the hot seat.

Obviously, there is plenty of blame to go around for such a bad loss to a bad team Saturday night. And unfortunately, they wasted a great game by Evan Berry and Derek Barnett. However, we’ll add one caveat and note this team is still banged up.

Still, this loss never should have happened. Here is a breakdown of who is most responsible.

And believe it or not, Butch Jones is not on this list.

Joshua Dobbs: 40 Percent

There’s no way around it. Dobbs played his worst game of the year. He threw two interceptions and had one fumble against the one team that you can’t fumble the ball against. Dobbs still engineered two nice drives and almost pulled off the miracle in the end.

But South Carolina forced him to throw from the pocket…and he couldn’t do that all game. Among all players, he is the most responsible for this loss. But why is he not above 40 percent?

Because the guy calling the plays for him deserves more blame.

Mike DeBord: 50 Percent

South Carolina has had a strong pass defense all year. Will Muschamp is a great defensive coach. And we all know Dobbs is useless throwing purely from the pocket.

So it should be no surprise that Muschamp would find out a way to keep Dobbs from being able to run with the football. However, DeBord still continued to rely on him to win the game. Meanwhile, even with Alvin Kamara and Jalen Hurd hurt, the Vols had John Kelly running hard at running back.

And South Carolina has struggled all year at stopping the run. Actually, struggled is putting it lightly. They’ve been atrocious. But DeBord called 14 handoffs to Kelly. And Kelly got 94 yards in the process. He should’ve handed it off to Kelly 25 times and cut Dobbs’s passes in half. Rule No. 1 against Muschamp is don’t give your team a chance to turn it over. DeBord failed on that rule.

Emmanuel Moseley: 5 Percent

For the most part, the defense played great. They gave up 24 points, but 14 of them came off turnovers. However, when Bob Shoop was forced to send extra guys due to the Vols being banged up at defensive tackle, he needed the cornerbacks to step up in one-on-one coverage.

Moseley gave up too many big plays in the process. Tennessee easily could have overcome those mistakes, but Moseley didn’t help matters. One other secondary player also struggled, and that guy gets our final bit of blame.

Nigel Warrior: 5 Percent

It’s one play, but that one play was a killer. South Carolina’s final touchdown that Jake Bentley threw came from a busted coverage. Nigel Warrior accidentally bracketed one receiver and left K.C. Crosby wide open for a touchdown.

That touchdown made the difference in the end, as South Carolina won the game 24-21. We’re probably being a bit unfair to Warrior since he was clearly not ready to be out there, but we just have to call it how we see it on missed plays. That was a missed play that killed the Vols.