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Tennessee football: Vols 5 worst seasons with a junior starting quarterback

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 19: Justin Worley #14 of the Tennessee Volunteers throws a pass in the first half of the game against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Neyland Stadium on October 19, 2013 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 19: Justin Worley #14 of the Tennessee Volunteers throws a pass in the first half of the game against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Neyland Stadium on October 19, 2013 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /
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Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images
Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images /

Tennessee football enters 2019 with starting quarterback Jarrett Guarantano. Here are the Volunteers five worst years with a junior signal caller.

As Jarrett Guarantano enters his redshirt junior year with Tennessee football, he is expected to take a major step forward. After all, he showed flashes last year as a sophomore and had high efficiency numbers.

However, the Vols still went 5-7 with him as the starter and were outside of the top 100. That followed a 2017 season in which he lost every game he started. So as he studies under his fourth offensive coordinator in four years, he’s still got a lot to prove.

Guarantano enters his junior season with much more experience than previous junior Tennessee football quarterbacks because of the redshirt he took. He also enters with more familiarity with a variety of offense.

None of that is relevant, however, when it comes to the fact that he needs to start winning. So which quarterbacks in Vols history does he want to avoid being compared to as he enters the 2019 season?

Well, in this post, we’re going to break that down. Although having a junior quarterback hints at experience, that hasn’t always meant a great season on Rocky Top. In fact, plenty of the Vols’ worst seasons came when they had a junior quarterback.

In this post, we’re going to rank the five worst UT seasons with a junior quarterback starting. To qualify, a junior quarterback has to have taken the vast majority of the snaps and started at least two-thirds of the games. And we’re only going to count from the Doug Dickey era onward since UT offensive schemes prior to the T-formation had multiple starters.

These rules would eliminate the 2017 season itself, which began with Quinten Dormady as the starter but only saw him start five games. By the way, though, if you want to be nervous about this year, Dormady was the last junior to start on Rocky Top. But Guarantano isn’t stuck with Butch Jones this year.

However, that didn’t apply to these other coaches either. So let’s break down the seasons that Vols fans would like to forget. These are Tennessee football’s five worst years with a junior starting quarterback.

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