Tennessee football report card in 34-13 loss to Aggies

Here are the Tennessee football Volunteers grades against Texas A&M.

There aren’t many positives to find from Saturday as Tennessee football lost its final regular season game, getting embarrassed by the Texas A&M Aggies 34-13. The game was nowhere near as close as the score indicated, though, as Jimbo Fisher’s team had the ball for over 44 minutes and ran over 40 more plays than the Vols.

It was a methodical, efficient blowout by Texas A&M, and not much went right on Rocky Top. However, they did built a 7-0 lead, and some players did their part to try to keep the Vols in the game until the midway point of the third quarter.

Just as we usually do in our grades, we’ll break this report card up into different position units. That’ll include two separate pages for the offense and then a separate page for the defense, kicking game and coaching. Let’s go ahead and dive in now. These are our grades for Tennessee football in a loss that knocked it to 3-7 on the year.

Offensive grades part I

Quarterbacks: D

Yes, Harrison Bailey didn’t throw an incomplete pass, and he and J.T. Shrout both had touchdown passes. However, they still were below average on the day. Bailey holding onto the ball too long caused him to be sacked three times, and he fumbled twice, losing one. Shrout’s overthrows resulted in him completing less than 50 percent of his passes, and he also had a fumble and a pick.

Running backs: D+

It’s hard to gauge how this group played, as Tennessee football didn’t run the ball enough without Eric Gray. Ty Chandler had seven carries for 31 yards, Jabari Small had one carry for four yards and Dee Beckwith had one carry for one yard. Chandler also had three catches for 15 yards. However, he also had a bad penalty that helped kill a drive. As a result, this group was below average.