Lots of memorable moments fueled a strong finish to Tennessee football’s 2019 season. Here are the 15 best plays from the Volunteers on the year.
Wild touchdowns on special teams, unlikely big plays sparking comebacks and huge defensive stops were all part of Jeremy Pruitt’s second season as head coach of the Tennessee football program. It took a lot of mental toughness in the process as well.
The combination of all of that resulted in an 8-5 finish, including a Gator Bowl win over the Indiana Hoosiers, despite an 0-2 start with two losses to Group of Five teams at home and then that turning into 1-4. UT was able to win its last six games.
But how were they able to do that? What were the moments that sparked the turnaround for Tennessee football? Well, in many cases, they were simply more common versions of occurrences that happened at the beginning of the year.
In this post, we’re going to break down all of those major moments. The best plays of the season for the Vols can be narrowed down to 15 specific ones, and they involve so many different key players who made names for themselves on Rocky Top this year.
Lots of players made big plays that spelled redemption for them, others just consistently made them all year, a few young players emerged as rising stars with them, and a group of seniors desperately trying to have a solid finish had multiple splash plays to make sure that happened. We’ll be able to brig all of that up here.
Our criteria for these plays include how spectacular they were, the level of contribution they had to a game and the magnitude of the game itself. The plays don’t have to have all those factors, but each of them weighs heavily in some way. Let’s see what we came up with doing that. These are the 15 most memorable plays of Tennessee football’s 2019 season.