Tennessee football: 5 reasons Vols loss at Gamecocks is a moral victory

1. Tennessee football had just two days to prepare for life without Trey Smith.

This is the biggest thing that worked against them. The Vols have already had major issues on the interior of their offensive line, but the one thing they could rely on was the play of both tackles, Drew Richmond on the right side and Trey Smith, their best blocker, on the left side.

However, left guard had been awful, and I personally had been advocating for Smith to move back inside just to offset how bad the play was there. Well, it all became irrelevant last Thursday, as news broke that Smith would be out indefinitely since the blood clots returned to his lungs.

It was a horrible break for Smith, but it also became a big problem for the Vols. After all, they had enough issues on the offensive line. But having just two days to prepare Marcus Tatum to start at either the most or second most important position up front was going to cause problems eventually in the game.

And it did just that. On Tennessee’s final drive, Tatum made two critical mistakes. He committed a false start penalty that further ran down the clock, and then he allowed Jarrett Guarantano to get sacked by missing his block on a three-man rush.

Those two things did it, and they were directly related to Smith being out. However, with more time to prepare Tatum now, he should be much better when the Vols next play a difficult game. The guy basically has two weeks.