Tennessee football report card: Grading the Vols in 24-20 Missouri win

There were clear standout units in Tennessee football’s 24-20 victory over the Mizzou Tigers. Here are our grades for the Volunteers.

Jeremy Pruitt was right to mention his team’s mistakes after Tennessee football won its fourth straight at the Missouri Tigers to get to 6-5. That’s what a good head coach does. But for every mistake, there was a positive play. And the mistakes and positive plays can be narrowed to a few specific units.

And as we look at how different groups performed, he’s right. Pruitt knows there are still too many things the Vols haven’t corrected 11 games into the season, and he’s right to suggest that they haven’t yet played their best.

But when we looked at the mistakes and positives, it was clear they were consistent across different units. There’s no debate which units stood out for Tennessee football and which units have a bit of work to do.

So as we get set to give our our report card for another huge win by the Vols, it’s worth noting that there are some groups that played well and others that came up extremely short. It’s crazy how vast the difference was between some groups.

Regardless, though, UT is above .500 for the first time this year. And momentum is with Rocky Top in Pruitt’s second season, as they have a very strong likelihood of finishing 7-5 now and a good chance to finish 8-5. That we can review the play of this team coming off that win with them being in that position given how they started is amazing.

As always, we’ll have one page for the offense, one page for defense, one page for special teams and one page for the coaches. And we’ll grade the specific position groups on each of those units before giving an overall grade.

Spoiler alert, the results are largely positive given what happened over the weekend. Nobody’s going to be shocked by that. So let’s get started. This is our Tennessee football report card following the Vols’ 24-20 win at the Missouri Tigers.