Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Vols’ 30-17 loss at Auburn

5. Special teams miscues proved costly.

The pick-six by Jarrett Guarantano and the horrendous pass defense will shield this storyline, but it’s not one that should be ignored. Tennessee football was on the short end of the stick in the kicking game, and that was not supposed to be a disadvantage this year with Brent Cimaglia.

On the Vols’ opening drive, Cimaglia missed a 50-yard field goal. There’s no shame in that, but Anders Carlson of the Auburn Tigers, who was three-for-three on the night, did nail a 50-yard field goal later in the game.

Why is that relevant? Well, Cimaglia later missed a 37-yarder. That was on the drive after the pick-six. Even with that pick-six, if Cimaglia makes those two field goals, UT has the ball at the end of the game down by only one score, which changes a lot of things. Instead, Carlson doing his job better than Cimaglia put the Vols out of this game.

We should also note that Velus Jones Jr. ran out a kickoff and only got to the 10-yard line when the Vols were already down two scores late, forcing them to run lots of clock on a drive. Still, eliminate that pick-six, and reverse the two Cimaglia misses, and UT likely wins this game 33-30. As a result, we have to blame special teams on this one too.