Overall, the Volunteers passed a major test in their 30-7 victory over the University of Alabama-Birmingham Blazers. Here are our Tennessee football grades.
Heading into this past Saturday, Tennessee football had no wins over teams currently with winning records. Sure, they beat the Mississippi State Bulldogs when MSU had a winning record, but that game knocked MSU to .500, and they have since sunk to having a losing record.
As a result, their 30-7 win Saturday over the UAB Blazers was a big deal. Despite the questions about how legitimate UAB’s six wins are given how easy their schedule has been, it’s still their first win over a team currently with a winning record this season.
That’s one more test that Tennessee football was able to pass en route to improving their record to 4-5 on the year while remaining 2-3 in the SEC. Now, as they try to get back to .500 on both fronts, they have to pass even more tests.
But for this weekend, we have to give the Vols credit for their win. They had a lot of positives, and as we get set to break down which units stood out, it’s worth noting that almost all of the units did what they needed to do to win. Not all of them were superb, although some of them were, but none of them were disastrous.
And against a great program led by Bill Clark, that’s all you can ask for. Some of the greatness for different units actually came down to one or two players who were simply amazing, but that does happen some times. We’ll break down where that happened as well.
In general, though, it’s safe to say that the Vols got a passing grade in this performance and were above average across the board. Jeremy Pruitt’s team had a lot to be proud of given what happened at homecoming this year.
Who is most responsible for it? As usual, our grades have four slides, one for offense, defense, special teams and coaching while breaking down the different position groups for all of those units. This is our report card for Tennessee football following the Vols’ 30-7 blowout homecoming victory over the UAB Blazers.