Tennessee football Smokey Points: Top five Vols in 43-14 Georgia loss

Even in another blowout loss, Tennessee football had plenty of players step up against the UGA Bulldogs. Here are the top five Volunteers performers.

They can lose 43-14 to arguably the most talented team in the nation, but Tennessee football clearly has a few players who don’t ever quit fighting. And that was the case when they faced the Georgia Bulldogs Saturday coming off a bye week.

Sure, the Vols fell to 1-4 on the year, and yes, they still have not yet beaten an FBS team this season. But a quarterback change that brought some early energy to the game and a few usual suspects stepping up among the veterans kept things relatively entertaining and interesting until the fourth quarter.

Simply put, Tennessee football has some guys trying to play the right way, but a lack of depth and a lack of experience across the board continue to plague Jeremy Pruitt’s second season on Rocky Top. So they are fighting hard amidst a slew of weaknesses.

As we get set to dole out our Smokey Points for today, the Vols’ top performers were those guys continuing to fight hard. A couple of them were predictable, as they have been all year, but there were a few surprises as well.

This was one game where you could measure who stepped up based on that stat line, and in many cases those stats were earned by just fighting extra hard. You feel bad for the players who top this list because they are stuck on a bad team while continuing to do everything they can to win.

But at least they can earn some respect from us on here, for whatever that’s worth. They deserve more respect than usual because of their fight and lack of quit, and we’re going to give that to them in this post.

So which players are we talking about? Who stepped up after the bye? Let’s go ahead and give them shoutouts. These are the top five Tennessee football performers in their 43-14 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs at home.