After beating Tennessee football 35-13, the storyline is the Alabama Crimson Tide losing Tua Tagovailoa. But that’s not why the Volunteers held tough.
It’s certainly something for them to worry about going forward. The Alabama Crimson Tide will need Tua Tagovailoa to be able to beat Joe Burrow and the LSU Tigers in November. But people should stock bringing that up as an excuse for Tennessee football hanging tough with them until the fourth quarter Saturday.
Let’s be clear, before the Tagovailoa injury happened, lots of things occurred to keep the Vols in the game. Nigel Warrior intercepted Tagovailoa on the goal line when the Tide were up 7-0 and about to go in for a second score, returned it 59 yards and cashed in with a game-tying touchdown.
Two more drives bu Tagovailoa did give them two more touchdowns, and he did complete 11-of-12 passes for 155 yards. But in between, UT had a touchdown drive that was turned into a field goal drive because of an inadvertent whistle by the referees.
But the trump card in all of this is the fact that Tennessee football also lost its starting quarterback in Brian Maurer. And Maurer, a mobile quarterback Nick Saban had not prepared for, was always the best candidate to beat the Tide.
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However, despite Maurer going down first, the overwhelming majority of the discussion of injured quarterbacks on ESPN centered around Tagovailoa. We get it. He’s a Heisman candidate. But could we not be fair to the other team that lost its starting quarterback? Maurer’s injury was just as devastating for Tennessee football, as he was playing very well before his injury.
He had one drive killed due to an interception that wasn’t his fault, then drove in for a touchdown before setting up what should have been their second touchdown drive when he went out. At the time of his injury, Maurer had completed five-of-seven passes for 62 yards and had a TD run.
When Jarrett Guarantano came in, he completed seven-of-16 passes, under 50 percent, for 55 yards. And he had the mistake of the game, trying to go over the top on 4th and goal from the one-yard line in the fourth quarter while down 28-13, which resulted in a fumble that Alabama returned for a touchdown.
Earlier in the same game, Maurer’s touchdown run was made off of a perfectly executed quarterback sneak. So UT lost as much with Maurer’s departure as the Tide did with Guarantano’s departure, and they still had made it a one-possession game on the road against the No. 1 ranked team in the nation in the third quarter.
Two bad whistles by the refs potentially kept the Vols from getting the ball back in a tie game. Jeremy Pruitt clearly had his team ready to play these guys, and Tagovailoa’s injury should not overshadow that. We all wish him well, as nobody likes to see star players get hurt. But some objectivity should make its way into the conversation.