Gray’s big day helps Tennessee trounce Vandy, maintain streak
Tennessee freshman Eric Gray rushed for 246 yards and three touchdowns — including breakaways of 56 and 94 yards — as the Volunteers trounced Vanderbilt 28-10 on Saturday to end the regular season with a five-game winning streak.
Lightning caused the game to start 28 minutes late. A second lightning delay lasting 39 minutes occurred midway through the fourth quarter with Tennessee leading 28-10.
“Early in the game, the ball was wet,” Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt said. “You could tell. We didn’t throw the ball or catch the ball nearly as well as we have in the past. So we had to run the ball, and our guys did a nice job of doing that.”
Gray more than doubled his previous season rushing total and had the fifthhighest single-game rushing total ever by a Tennessee player.
His 56-yard and 94-yard runs were Tennessee’s two longest carries of the season. Gray’s 94-yarder was the second-longest run from scrimmage in Tennessee history, trailing only Kelsey Finch’s 99-yarder in a 2717 loss to Florida in 1977.
Tennessee (7-5, 5-3 Southeastern Conference) clinched its first winning season since 2016 as it continued its rebound from a 1-4 start. The Volunteers went 4-8 in 2017 and 5-7 last year.
“We were 1-4 and probably nobody gave us much hope, but these guys stayed the course, stuck together,”
Pruitt said.
Vanderbilt (3-9, 1-7) was seeking its fourth straight victory in an annual series that Tennessee has traditionally dominated. Tennessee went 28-1 against Vanderbilt from 1983-2011, but Vanderbilt won five of their seven matchups from 2012-18 and had beaten the Vols by an average margin of 18 points the last three years.
But the Commodores couldn’t come close to extending that streak.
“Tonight we just didn’t have enough horses,” Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason said. “Guys went out and they fought and they played hard. But we couldn’t overcome the idea of tackling and what that may look like on those two big runs. I thought we did a good job of containing them most of the night, but a couple runs got out.”
Vanderbilt was a threetouchdown underdog and watched its remote hopes for an upset fade when 1,000-yard rusher Ke’Shawn Vaughn appeared to hurt his left shoulder on the Commodores’ first play from scrimmage.
Vaughn returned to the game on Vanderbilt’s next series but sat out the entire second half and finished with six carries for just 13 yards. Vanderbilt also played the entire game without injured tight end Jared Pinkney.
Gray was the dominant running back in this game instead.
The Tennessee freshman has earned plenty of praise for his big-play potential, but he had just 207 yards rushing and 81 yards receiving through the Vols’ first 11 games and hadn’t been much of a factor since the first month of the season.
That all changed Saturday. Tennessee was trailing 3-0 until Gray took over the game.
On his first carry of the night, Gray ran through a big hole on the right side, then cut to his left and was untouched on a 56-yard breakaway that put Tennessee ahead for good. Gray’s first career touchdown run also was Tennessee’s longest carry of the season up to that point.
After Jarrett Guarantano’s 6-yard touchdown pass to Dominick Wood-Anderson extended Tennessee’s lead to 14-3, Gray would deliver an even bigger highlight.
Tennessee was backed up at its own 6-yard line midway through the second quarter after a 57-yard punt from Harrison Smith when the Vols handed the ball to Gray. The speedy freshman raced through the right side of the line, eluded safety Dashaun Jerkins’ diving tackle attempt just beyond the line of scrimmage and wasn’t touched the rest of the way.
Gray added a 4-yard touchdown run midway through the fourth quarter.
Vanderbilt’s lone touchdown came on Riley Neal’s 22-yard touchdown pass to Kalija Lipscomb with 11:34 remaining. Neal went 14 of 29 for 139 yards passing.