Tennessee football: Vols erase years of frustration vs. Will Muschamp

Beating the South Carolina Gamecocks 41-21 was good enough for Tennessee football. But the Volunteers also erased frustration against Will Muschamp.

It was the streak that made no sense. Tennessee football could justify a losing record to Steve Spurrier and going winless against Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer when they led the Florida Gators. But going 0-7 against Will Muschamp made no sense.

And it wasn’t just that they went winless. The Vols invented ways to lose to him, such as blowing their 9-0 lead against Florida in 2014. They just could not beat him, and the curse against him was as strong as the curse against UF.

Muschamp’s win over the Vols in 2016 propelled his team to a bowl game, eliminated the SEC East hopes for Butch Jones’s best team and really started the downward spiral that Jones suffered on Rocky Top. Yes, his win that year was that brutal. The next year, he beat Jones in Jarrett Guarantano’s first start 15-9 as Jones began to unravel.

But even before Jones, Derek Dooley’s team allowed 24 straight points to a Muschamp-led offense in 2012. And that loss to Florida, similar to Jones in 2016, started the downward spiral that ended Dooley’s tenure with Tennessee football. When Jeremy Pruitt’s team blew a two-score lead last year, they just seemed cursed.

So there was plenty of reason to bet against the 2-5 Vols as they allowed a 75-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the game, failed to score on 4th and goal from the one-yard line and also saw Brent Cimaglia miss his first field goal under 40 yards all season. These are always the ways they lose to Muschamp.

This time, though, they managed to undo all the frustration. For every big play they allowed, Tennessee football made its own big play. Whether it be the Marquez Callaway punt return, Jauan Jennings’s two touchdown catches, JT Shrout’s touchdown pass or Daniel Bituli’s blocked punt for a touchdown, they couldn’t stop making big plays.

In the end, the Vols appeared to unleash years of frustration against Muschamp in one second half. It was similar to how they dominated Florida in the second half in 2016 to end all of those other years of futility.

They made one big play after another, and it didn’t matter which quarterback was throwing the ball or which receiver was catching it. After all, their two offensive touchdowns in the second half were on back to back drives. Then they got a key fourth down stop after their second offensive touchdown. So they just got into a rhythm and couldn’t be stopped.

When you face a Muschamp-led team, you don’t expect to win if you allow 21 points in the first half and over 300 passing yards from the quarterback. And you especially don’t expect that when you suffer the way Tennessee football has this year. But it didn’t matter for Rocky Top.

They just kept on fighting, and they came away with a huge victory. This is obviously a dramatically different team from the one that started the season 0-2. But it’s also a dramatically different team from the other seven to lose to Muschamp.