Tennessee football report card: Grading the Vols in their loss at Vanderbilt

Tennessee football had distinct units responsible for their 38-13 loss to the Vanderbilt Commodores. Here are the Volunteers’ grades.

There’s not much to boast about for Tennessee football now after a second straight season missing a bowl game, a third straight loss to Vanderbilt and a fifth loss in this season alone by 25 points or more. All of those things were the result of another awful performance by the Vols Saturday, this time in Nashville.

Jeremy Pruitt’s first team on Rocky Top gets no postseason, and very few players have anything to brag about. This loss to Derek Mason’s team only made things worse. Lots of players have reason to feel embarrassed.

So as we get set to break down the performance of the different Tennessee football units following Saturday’s game, it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of bad grades to give out. Nobody is going to be surprised by that statement.

However, there are also some units who actually earned good grades and some praise. They are few and far between, but the Vols had a few more decent performers Saturday than they had the previous week against the Missouri Tigers.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not to celebrate the team’s play overall. And we’ll have plenty of groups to criticize as we go through these grades. This just make a point that not everybody is at fault for what happened Saturday.

With the season at an end, it’s pretty obvious which groups made a lasting impression. And as you’ll notice, the most unfortunate part about it for the Vols is some of those groups are made up of all seniors. So that makes Jeremy Pruitt’s rebuilding job a bit more difficult heading into the offseason.

But who are the groups to call out? And which ones deserve praise? Let’s break them down here in our final Tennessee football report card of the 2018 season. These are the Vols’ grades following their 38-13 loss to the Vanderbilt Commodores.