Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Vols’ loss to Georgia Bulldogs

3. Special teams had its worst game.

This was supposed to be Tennessee football’s biggest strength. And for a large portion of the season, that has been the case. But it was not the case in this game, and it ended up being costly for the Vols in a big way. In fact, these issues are what made it a blowout and not just your run of the mill loss.

The standout moment was Brent Cimaglia. He had his first miss of the year after making all nine attempts in the first four games, including one from beyond 50, a 40-yarder in overtime and a 31-yard go-ahead fourth quarter field goal in the other game. Simply put, he has shown he is clutch and has the leg power.

In this game, with UT down 20-14, he missed a 47-yard attempt, which allowed the Georgia Bulldogs to march down the field late in the first half and take a 26-14 lead with another touchdown. Cimaglia still doesn’t get any blame, as he had done more than enough for the program so far this year, but his miss was still costly.

Meanwhile, Joe Doyle only averaged 33.4 yards per punt while only one of his five punts was pinned inside the 20. He had a 13-yard punt at one point, which was disastrous. He has been regressing recently, and it culminated with this game, just after he was added to the Ray Guy Award Watch List.

Georgia scored three touchdowns and a field goal on Doyle’s five punts. So he was atrocious, and it was surprising. Simply put, this unit was awful as a whole, and it’s a reason that Tennessee football wasn’t able to make this a game.