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Tennessee football Smokey Points: Top five Vols performers vs. Mississippi State

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 5: The Tennessee Volunteers mascot Smokey runs through the end zone after a score against the Georgia Bulldogs at Neyland Stadium on October 5, 2013 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 5: The Tennessee Volunteers mascot Smokey runs through the end zone after a score against the Georgia Bulldogs at Neyland Stadium on October 5, 2013 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images /

It took a team effort for Tennessee football to beat the Mississippi State Bulldogs 20-10. Here are the UT Volunteers who earned Smokey Points against MSU.

A defensive victory like the one Tennessee football enjoyed Saturday doesn’t usually come with a few specific standout players. In fact, it’s almost always the result of an overall team win and a bunch of players stepping up.

That was the case for the Vols as they beat the Mississippi State Bulldogs, finally getting on the right track. They may have just moved to 2-4 on the year and 1-2 in the SEC, but their first win against an FBS school after such a horrendous start means a lot.

Jeremy Pruitt has dealt with many issues on this team, but for one noon game in front of nearly 90,000 at Neyland Stadium, they all seemed secondary. The positives for Tennessee football outweighed the negatives.

As we get set to look at the top performers from this game, you’ll see how much of a team win it was. There was at least one more offensive player we could have named who contributed as much as the ones we did name, and there are a few who contributed slightly less but deserved a shoutout anyway.

Meanwhile, the defense could have had 10 guys named. Only a couple of players on that side of the ball had a standout stat line, but it was a team effort to hold an elite rushing offense to one of its worst outings of the season and force a lot of turnovers on a team that doesn’t turn it over.

After all, three different players had an interception, and another had a forced fumble. Nine different players contributed to the team’s 10 tackles for a loss, and six different players contributed to the team’s seven sacks. UT’s leading tackler was in none of these categories, and nobody who forced a turnover contributed to a tackle for a loss.

So as you can see, it was a team effort in every way possible. But who stood out the most? Which players could we pick out of the bunch? Well, we did our best. These are the five Vols who earned our Smokey Points in Tennessee football’s victory over the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

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