Tennessee football vs. Florida: 5 fluke losses Vols gave away to Gators

2. 2017 – Florida Gators defeat Tennessee Volunteers 26-20

It was the game that put Butch Jones on the hot seat for good, and that’s no exaggeration. Tennessee football was facing a Florida Gators team led by Jim McElwain who had nine players suspended. And they still couldn’t win.

We expected an ugly defensive slugfest in this game, and that is indeed what we saw early on. The Vols fell behind to the Gators 6-3 at halftime, with three field goals exchanged by either team. But that’s not where the game was given away.

In the second half, Tennessee football got inside the red zone twice, including one time in which they got to the Florida one-yard line. That time, the Vols inexplicably called three pass plays despite John Kelly running it down Florida’s throat.

They also got pushed back because of a false start penalty after a fluke injury that kept Quinten Dormady out for one play. The final pass resulted in an interception after a series of errors. Another time they got inside the red zone, Larry Scott called a dumb play-action pass that resulted in a sack.

Again, Kelly was torching everybody. What Scott did made no sense. That play knocked them out of a makable field goal. And by the way, the Vols used two kickers that day and missed three field goals overall.

Then there was Dormady’s pick-six that gave the Gators a 13-3 lead. John Kelly got an unsportsmanlike conduct after a touchdown to cut it to 13-10 that spotted Florida good field position again to give them a touchdown.

But the final part of the game was the worst. After cutting the lead to 20-17 and getting the ball inside the 10, the play for the Vols was to run the clock. If you score a touchdown, you then win. With a field goal, the Gators then have no time to score a game-winning touchdown or get into field goal range.

Instead, once again, Jones and Scott called three pass plays inside the 10-yard line. All three were incomplete. With the game tied and a ton of time, Florida got the ball, and despite Jim McElwain’s clock mismanagement, Tennessee football made one final mistake. They played base defense with nine seconds left, allowing Feleipe Franks to throw a game-winning Hail Mary for the 26-20 win.

Make no mistake, the Vols gave this game away to Florida. All of these calls were so ridiculous by Jones that it was an easy decision to want him fired immediately after the game. The incompetence was at an all time high, and Florida took advantage of that while also getting lots of fluke plays of their own to win.