Tennessee football report card: Grading the Vols in 35-13 Alabama loss
Lots of different units came through for Tennessee football against the Alabama Crimson Tide. Here are the UT Volunteers’ grades in their loss.
Normally, a 35-13 loss wouldn’t have much to celebrate. But Tennessee football was in the game with the No. 1 ranked team in the nation on the road until about midway through the fourth quarter before things unraveled.
The Vols had made it a one-possession game with five minutes left in the third quarter and were a bad penalty away from getting the ball back at that point. Meanwhile, they managed to get one inch away from making it a one-possession game again in the fourth quarter before a fumble that was returned the other way when down 28-13.
That play turned 28-20 into 35-13. So it skews what really happened. Tennessee football hung tough with the Alabama Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa for a while, and it makes them look significantly better than their 2-5 record and 1-3 SEC record indicates.
Key mistakes by different units cost the Vols. But lots of units also stepped up and fought their hearts out in this game. So as we get set to dish out our report card for the different groups, it’s actually hard to give out the grades.
Some of the units performed tremendously but at the same time had the key mistakes that cost them. There were players in units that made the key mistakes while others played awesome. So how do you grade the unit as a whole when that happens?
That’s what we’re going to attempt to do here. As usual, we’ll grade the different position units for offense, defense and special teams and then give out our coaching grades. It was a team effort to stay in the game, but it was also a team effort in the mistakes that cost the game. Officiating didn’t help either, to be fair.
But that’s beside the point. Who stood out and who didn’t? Which groups deserve credit for fighting hard? Let’s break all of that down here. This is our Tennessee football report card following the Vols’ 35-13 loss at Alabama.