Tennessee football: Five takeaways from 34-13 loss to Aggies

2. Both quarterbacks’ issues were exposed.

Once again, J.T. Shrout and Harrison Bailey split time. However, the Texas A&M Aggies managed to expose where their shortcomings are, and in both cases, those shortcomings are significant. At least they know what to work on in the offseason.

Bailey appeared to have better stats, completing all six of his attempts for 85 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions. He’s actually pretty accurate when he does throw the ball and makes the right reads.

However, Bailey was sacked three times, and none of those sacks were the fault of the pass protection, which we’ve criticized a lot this year. Bailey just refuses to get rid of the ball and kept holding onto it for far too long. The result was a fumble at one point that set up a Texas A&M field goal to put them up by two scores.

Shrout, meanwhile, was 6-of-14 for 104 yards and a touchdown and interception. His deep ball was beautiful, and he’s much better in the pocket. However, Shrout throws a fastball every play, and that resulted in numerous overthrows on wheel routes and 10-yard passes over the middle. If he can fix that, he could be Tennessee football’s quarterback of the future.