UT finds positives from 26-point loss
ATHENS, Ga. — Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt thought about his team’s 38-12 loss at No. 2 Georgia on Saturday afternoon — a loss in which his Volunteers briefly were within 24-12 early in the fourth quarter — and said, “We’re headed in the right direction.”
Georgia coach Kirby Smart assessed his Bulldogs’ performance in that same game and said, “Our guys played hard; we just didn’t always play smart. Lack of execution gets you beat. We must execute at a higher level to be successful.”
Don’t misunderstand. Pruitt also said there are “no moral victories.”
Smart also said, “When we had to play well in the second half, we challenged them and they did so.”
But if all of this sounds like the team that lost acted as if it had won and the team that won behaved as it might after a loss, well, so be it. That’s the difference in playing for championships and playing for respect. That’s the difference in standing 5-0 overall and 3-0 in the Southeastern Conference, as Georgia does today, and being 2-3 overall and 0-2
within the SEC, as UT is at the moment.
That also doesn’t mean that either side was wrong to take the view each seemed to embrace after an SEC East contest that sort of looked the way most expected it to if you only saw the final score but felt much closer if you witnessed it live on this warm, sun-kissed and somewhat muggy afternoon, especially in the final half.
In fact, were it not for one of the oddest touchdowns either side may ever see less than seven minutes along, this might easily have been a one-touchdown game with 10 minutes to play.
Or how often have you seen a quarterback stripped of the ball, the ball bounce straight into the arms of that QB’s tight end, who was standing maybe two feet away, and that tight end bobs and bulls his way 31 yards for a touchdown?
“No, we didn’t practice that one,” smiling Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm said afterward.
Added Bulldogs tight end Isaac Nauta, similarly amused by his unlikely score: “(We) might need to let me get the ball a little more in the backfield.”
After a pause he added, “Actually, let’s not do that. I’ve never seen a play like that happen before.”
The Vols, who had done such good work to force that strip, surely hope they never witness a bounce like that again.
Even Smart quickly said of that fumble: “It bounced up lucky. If not for that, it would have been an even tighter game.”
When you lose by 26 points, such plays can be lost. But this would have undoubtedly been a tighter game if that fumble had bounced to the Vols, who would have seized a bit of momentum on a day when Georgia never appeared capable of sustaining its A game.
That’s in no way to say UT might have gone on to win. If anything, it might have awakened these drowsy Dawgs, which didn’t seem to occur until the Vols pulled within 24-12. But we’ll never know that.
What the Big Orange Nation needs to know, or at least consider, is this: It can all change in a hurry.
You think rebuilding a once-proud football program has to take a long period of time? Maybe four or more seasons at the minimum?
Let us return to 2016, just two years ago. Tennessee finished that season 9-4 overall (after a bowl win) and 4-4 in the SEC during Butch Jones’ fourth season as head coach. Georgia was 8-5 that season and 4-4 in the SEC during its first year under Smart.
A year later the Vols went 4-8, winless in the SEC, and cleaned house, from the chancellor on down. Georgia, of course, reached the national championship game before losing a heartbreaker to Alabama in overtime.
Any reasonable fan of Georgia or Tennessee surely understands that expecting Pruitt to take the Vols to the national title game in his second season on Rocky Top would be an unrealistic expectation. However mediocre the Bulldogs might have seemed in Smart’s first season, they were loaded with championship talent and experience.
As Pruitt, who coached at Georgia in 2015, noted, “I saw some familiar (Georgia) faces out there. We’ve got five seniors. They’ve got a lot of experience over there.”
Indeed, on the Bulldogs’ two-deep defensive depth chart alone there are 15 juniors and seniors. It takes time. It takes experience. It takes talent.
The question, of course, is how much of this somewhat competitive game between the nation’s No. 2 team and its far less respected visitor was a result of Georgia being a bit off at the same time Tennessee maintained a season’s best level of intensity and consistency?
Yes, the Vols were better than they had been, particularly in the passing game, but as Pruitt also sagely noted, “It’s pretty easy to throw the ball when you’re down 24-0.”
But it’s also true that it didn’t stay 24-0. Or grow worse from there rather than better. The Big Orange briefly closed within 24-12. Outgained by 170 yards in the opening half, its offense stayed within 62 yards of the Georgia offense over the final two periods, making an SEC powerhouse nervous, if only for a few moments.
“I thought we were resilient today,” said UT’s Daniel Bituli. “We kept fighting hard.”
Said Pruitt, using words rarely accurate of late when discussing the Vols’ effort against a highly ranked foe: “People on both sides of the field knew they were in a football game today.”
That neither side’s fans expected to be in such a contest at game’s beginning strongly hints that Pruitt’s passion and preparation could make the Vols a realistic threat to at least occasionally shock the league’s elite far sooner than anyone thought possible.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer @timesfreepress.com.