Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Vols’ 60-14 win vs. South Alabama Jaguars

For only the second time in the past five years, Tennessee football clinched bowl eligibility based on NCAA standards: by reaching six wins in the regular season. After a 41-17 loss to the No. 1 ranked Georgia Bulldogs last week, UT got its sixth win in the first year of the Josh Heupel era by blowing out the South Alabama Jaguars 60-14.

South Alabama is in its first year under head coach Kane Wommack and fell to 5-6 on the season while the Vols improved to 6-5. This was the second meeting between the two schools, with Rocky Top winning 31-24 the first time they faced off back in the 2013 season.

Up next for Tennessee football is a home game against the Vanderbilt Commodores, which will be an attempt to guarantee a winning season. South Alabama will face the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers to achieve bowl eligibility, which will be tough. Ahead of next week’s game, here are five things we learned from the Vols’ win.

5. There was no letdown after Georgia.

Given what happened last week, it was very easy to see the Vols struggling to find their motivation to beat a mediocre non-conference foe. After all, the talk everywhere was that they would easily beat their final two foes to get seven wins, so everything was about trying to beat Georgia for icing on the cake.

Well, they still showed motivation to play this game. It’s not like South Alabama didn’t have something to play for. As mentioned earlier, a bowl bid was on the line, and they had two tough games to get there, so they naturally should have been much more motivated.

However, Tennessee football managed to match South Alabama’s excitement. The Vols built their huge lead early, as they have been doing all year, but in this game, they didn’t let up, outscoring South Alabama by 14 points in each of the first three quarters. That hasn’t been common for Heupel’s kids, so this win was impressive by that standard alone.