Tennessee Football Is A Joke

What an embarrassing effort tonight by the Vols. Good lord. I can honestly say this is the worst played game I’ve ever witnessed from Tennessee, particularly when you consider the opponent and how important this game was for the overall health of the program and the psyche of the fan base. Like I wrote yesterday, there’s a really good chance this will be the worst Florida team Jeremy Pruitt ever gets to play, and yet, the Vols got absolutely taken apart from the opening kick.

The offensive line is flagrantly bad, and it’s incredible to me that they haven’t been able to figure out that unit for the last decade. They were so awful tonight that Jarrett Guarantano literally had to come out of the game at one point in the second quarter because he’d taken about 5 million hits to the chest. They were so poor that it was almost like they played the entire game without any offensive lineman.

I can’t decide what play told the story of the game the best, so I’ve narrowed it down to these:

• When they blocked so terribly that they gave up a safety
• When Ryan Johnson snapped the ball off his leg and they fumbled in field goal range
• When they fumbled the opening kickoff of the second half and killed any chance of making it competitive 
• When Guarantano threw the ball directly into the hands of a Florida defensive lineman on an attempted screen pass
• When Guarantano had to come out of the game in the second quarter because he’d gotten his chest caved in about 40 different times
• When the Vols pulled off a beautiful play on 4^th and 1, a play action pass to a wide open Austin Pope. Pope's trot down the sidelines for what looked like a walk in touchdown was stopped when a Florida defender came out of nowhere and met him inside the five yard line. The force from the hit caused him to inexplicably fumble the ball through the back of the end zone even though the side of his body that was carrying the ball wasn’t touched at all.

Here's what’s really concerning; the stink of the last decade plus is so strong that the fan base expects everything to go wrong at the first sign of trouble. Hell, I feel the same way. When Florida scored their first touchdown a few plays after they clocked Guarantano and forced him to give up the ball, the entire crowd looked like they just learned that their dog died. “Not again”. “I can’t believe I fell for this crap again”. “I show up here and get super excited and they’re just going to get their teeth kicked in”. You could just feel all of the energy leave the stadium. And the players felt it too. The culture of losing, of being mediocre, of getting your ass kicked, and of always blowing it is more tied to this program than General Neyland’s Game Maxims at this point.

About the only thing I liked tonight was how aggressive Pruitt was. They got off to a horrible start and the offensive line was clearly outmatched, so he knew he was going to have to take some chances, but the problem was that none of his players executed. The surprise onside kick is a perfect example of this; you’ve got three guys around one Florida player and you can’t find a way to come down with the football? Sure, LaMichael Perine made a fantastic play to recover it, but you just have to find a way to recover ball in that situation when you catch them totally by surprise and have a massive advantage. The fumble through the end zone is another one. You draw up this beautiful play that gets Austin Pope wide open and he blows it by forgetting how to hold onto the ball when he gets hit.

Again, this is not a good Florida team. Really. They got pushed around by Kentucky at home (the only good team they've played so far), Feleipe Franks is a bottom tier SEC quarterback, their defense is average, and they have no scary people at the skill positions. And they still destroyed Tennessee. The outcome was never really in doubt. 

The Vols aren't close to being good. They do nothing well in any of the three facets of the game, and there's nothing to be excited about going forward. That game against Georgia next Saturday might be 65-0. 

3-9 feels like where this season is headed. Another losing year in 2019 feels probable. And I don't see why anyone would feel good about 2020 either. 

The coaching staff obviously wasn't good enough tonight either, but even they can only do so much. I killed Butch Jones in this space for years because of how poor he was in-game, and how his awful decision making played a direct role in Tennessee losing multiple winnable games, but tonight, the majority of the blame goes on the players.  Butch Jones might’ve gotten fired, but the “Champions of Life” culture that he built is still rampant in this program. And it's on Pruitt to change that. So far, he hasn't.