In a blowout loss to the UGA Bulldogs, Tennessee football did have some units show up. Here are our grades for the Volunteers against the Dawgs.
Well, 43-14 isn’t going to bring a lot of passing grades most of the time. Tennessee football had some clear positives in their loss to the Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday, but putting up those results at home represents some clear failures somewhere.
But where do they come from? After all, UT made a quarterback change and took a 14-10 lead at one point in the first half. So there were clearly some things that stood out in a positive way before a series of mistakes sent it all downhill. Was it due to a few Vols units who played insanely bad or a collective failure?
The truth is it was somewhat of a mix for Tennessee football. Yes, there was a collective failure, but some units were insanely bad while others actually played relatively well. Then there were a few in the middle that just didn’t stand out.
As we get set to give our report card for Rocky Top following this loss, we’ll be able to pinpoint exactly where the massive failures were. Coming off a bye, some of them were expected, but a couple of areas of struggle were major surprises.
Then again, there were a couple of bright spots that were major surprises too. So it all somewhat balanced itself out in a blowout loss, and despite this being Jeremy Pruitt’s second season, Vol fans saw this as a game to gauge their development coming off a bye.
After all, this team is 1-4 with two home losses to Group of Five schools and no wins over an FBS program. They now have losses of 31 and 29 points to their only Power Five opponents. They never really stood a chance against a 5-0 team that was also coming off a bye, may have the most talent in the nation, and most recently beat a top 10 Notre Dame Fighting Irish team.
So fans knew what to look for when things kicked off. Where were they right? Who came to play? Which units did not come to play? We break all of that down here in our report card for Tennessee football following the Vols’ 43-14 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs.