Tennessee football: Vols can’t forget last time Kentucky used WR at QB

When Tennessee football visits the Kentucky Wildcats on Saturday, the Volunteers will be facing a wide receiver at quarterback. UT has a bad history there.

Remember 2011. Jim Chaney was offensive coordinator on that team. Jeremy Pruitt was still the Alabama Crimson Tide’s defensive backs coach. But one game from that year wrecked Tennessee football for a decade.

On Saturday, when the Vols face the Kentucky Wildcats in Lexington, they will be going up against a receiver at quarterback in Lynn Bowden Jr. This comes as UT, at 4-5, is attempting to get to 5-5 and have a real chance to reach a bowl game after a horrendous start.

There are lots of similarities between this situation and what happened back in 2011. Not only is it similar with Chaney as an offensive coordinator, but like Pruitt now, Derek Dooley was in his second year as head coach of Tennessee football. Oh, and Tyler Bray got hurt that year, while the Vols have had multiple injury issues at quarterback this year.

After a horrendous middle part of the season that year, UT rebounded with the return of Bray and had just beaten the Vanderbilt Commodores in overtime. They were 5-6 and set to face a 4-7 Kentucky team led by Joker Phillips. With UK set to run a receiver in at quarterback and winless against the Vols since 1984, a bowl game was evident. But then it wasn’t.

Matt Roark only threw six passes, and he only completed four of them for 15 yards total. But Tyler Bray was 15-of-38 with two interceptions, and he was the catalyst for a goal-line fumble. Meanwhile, Roark also ran for 124 yards, and the team as a whole went for over 200 yards on the ground with CoShik Williams adding 68 yards and a touchdown. In the process, UK won 10-7.

It was a hideous loss for Rocky Top, and Derek Dooley said years later that it was the culmination of him making excuses for all of the young talent that year and not setting the standard. He called it “100 percent my worst mistake.” But the fallout was even worse.

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Because the loss cost Tennessee football a shot at a bowl game and ended a longtime winning streak, Dave Hart, who had been hired just a few months earlier, openly undercut Dooley. He declared such a season unacceptable and became very firm about not renewing contracts for assistant coaches.

As a result of that lack of stability, UT lost seven assistants that offseason, the most notable one being defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox. Then Wilcox’s planned replacement, Kevin Steele, allowed 70 points in the Orange Bowl as the Clemson Tigers’ defensive coordinator in what was the worst timing ever, so Dooley panicked and went with Sal Sunseri.

That Sunseri hire was the difference between Tennessee football going 10-2 the next year and Dooley keeping his job and what they did go, which was 5-7, and Dooley losing his job. Combine that with the fact that the lack of a bowl game and lack of stability wrecked the 2012 recruiting class in many ways, and the loss to Kentucky had a long-term impact on UT.

This is what can happen when you lose to Kentucky. And it’s what could await the Vols on Saturday, as once again, UK is running a receiver at quarterback. We know that can dramatically alter history. Chaney knows it. Pruitt needs to be ready.