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Tennessee football: Ranking every Vols team in 2010s decade

By Caleb Calhoun

ATHENS, GA - OCTOBER 1: Jauan Jennings #15 of the Tennessee Volunteers rides the shoulders of Gavin Bryant #36 after making the game winning catch against the Georgia Bulldogs at Sanford Stadium on October 1, 2016 in Athens, Georgia. (Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)
ATHENS, GA - OCTOBER 1: Jauan Jennings #15 of the Tennessee Volunteers rides the shoulders of Gavin Bryant #36 after making the game winning catch against the Georgia Bulldogs at Sanford Stadium on October 1, 2016 in Athens, Georgia. (Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images /

6. 2013

5-7 (2-6)

*No postseason

Five years before 2018, Butch Jones took over a very similar situation his first year with Tennessee football. However, he actually inherited a lot more talent from Derek Dooley than what he left Jeremy Pruitt, particularly on the offensive line, where stars like Ja’Wuan James, Antonio Richardson and Zach Fulton helped out.

Jones’s issue was trying to force his spread offense onto Justin Worley. This was his grace year, and he was already winning Vol fans over by securing an elite recruiting class for 2014. After a 2-0 start, his lack of depth showed, as the Vols got blown out by the Oregon Ducks. Jones overreacted by starting Nathan Peterman at the Florida Gators.

The disastrous play by Peterman forced him to put Worley back in, but it was too late, and they lost 31-17. After an ugly win over the South Alabama Jaguars, the Vols finally appeared to show they were turning a corner by taking the Georgia Bulldogs to overtime. At 3-3, two weeks later they scored an amazing win.

UT beat Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks 23-21 off a last-second field goal. It was their first win over a top 25 team since 2009. More importantly, S.C. finished the year in the top five, and this loss kept them from playing for the SEC and potentially national title. So it may have been the most impressive win of the decade for the Vols.

Anyway, at 4-3, things looked bright. But in a blowout loss at the Alabama Crimson Tide, Worley suffered a season-ending injury. Since Peterman was ineffective, Jones turned to Joshua Dobbs, who just wasn’t ready yet. With Dobbs at the helm, UT suffered blowout losses to the Missouri Tigers and Auburn Tigers, both of whom would play for the SEC title.

After that, though, they then lost a close one at home to the Vanderbilt Commodores. Beating the Kentucky Wildcats got them to 5-7. But if Worley had played the whole year, this team would’ve likely gone 7-5, beating Florida and Vanderbilt.

For all of his issues, this season wasn’t a terrible coaching job by Jones. He suffered an unlucky injury to his quarterback and did make one mistake in a switch, but his first team still did score a huge win, and that counts for something.

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