Rucker: Tenacious Tennessee prevails in full-program win – 247Sports
If you’d told me at any point this week that Tennessee would beat South Carolina by a score of 41-21, I would have said these three things in some order.
“What are you smoking? And may I have some?”
“Is Brian Maurer really going to play?”
“So you’re saying Tennessee will get every single break in the game?”
I can’t speak to the first question. But I darn sure can speak to the other two.
Maurer didn’t play. And Tennessee was the benefit of some truly bad breaks in that game.
But there it was after 60 minutes: Tennessee 41, South Carolina 21.
When people use the team “program win” or “culture win,” they’re talking about games like the one Tennessee played Saturday.
The Vols didn’t have their best quarterback. They surrendered a 75-yard touchdown pass on the game’s first play. They lost two starting offensive linemen in the first half, and only one could return in the second half — and it was a true freshman who was asked to play a different position. They had one of their best defensive linemen disqualified from the game in the first half with a targeting penalty. They overcame a series of truly terrible officiating decisions, and thank goodness for instant replay or it would have been worse. South Carolina was given four touchdowns in the first half that I’m not sure were touchdowns. Three definitely weren’t touchdowns, and replay overturned them. A fourth was too close to overturn. Batting .250 at best on goal-line touchdown calls is a bad look for a league whose officiating crews have had a rough time recently.
As soon as the Vols started to play through all that adversity, they lost junior quarterback Jarrett Guarantano with a broken bone in his left (non-throwing) hand, and they had to finish the game with the same combination of quarterbacks who started it. That duo, by the way, was a senior wide receiver in a wildcat formation and a redshirt freshman with 10 career passing attempts heading into the game. I think Tennessee “started” J.T. Shrout but had every intention of bringing Guarantano off the bench and playing him most of the game, and that plan worked brilliantly. Guarantano didn’t have to get booed loudly when the starting lineups were announced, and the Vols got to spend a majority of the game playing the quarterback they thought gave them the best chance to win.
But then that quarterback got hurt, and Shrout — with an assist from Jennings — was forced back onto the field with a four-point lead and 22-plus minutes still on the clock.
Then Tennessee’s best pass rusher — senior outside linebacker Darrell Taylor, who was playing an outstanding game — went out with a knee injury.
Another one of the Vols’ best players — senior wide receiver Marquez Callaway, who also was playing an outstanding game — went out with a back injury.
Was it a Murphy’s Law situation? No. Tennessee’s fortunes for the past decade are strong evidence that things could have been worse.
But there were so many points in that game where I thought the Vols would lose enough spirit to lose that game. I never expected them to quit, because this bunch doesn’t do that. But anything less than maximum effort makes it tough for this team to beat any quality opponent, and human nature dictates that people running into a series of bad breaks eventually get frustrated and lose focus.
Tennessee never did that Saturday, though.
We just saw some of the best competitive spirit we’ve seen from a Tennessee football team in a long time.
That was a program win. A culture win. A win that doesn’t happen without focus, commitment and resolve from every spoke in the wheel.
When every spoke in a wheel is that locked in, you have to look at the center of that wheel.
This Tennessee wheel has two centers — a coaching staff led by boss Jeremy Pruitt, and a group of players led by senior wide receiver Jauan Jennings.
I don’t mean to diminish the hard and good work by every other coach and player in the Tennessee program. Things are never that simple. Football is the ultimate team sport, and you’re usually no better than the weakest link in your chain.
But this whole thing starts with Pruitt and Jennings.
Those two ruthless competitors are driving this thing.
It’s tough on the surface to imagine how any one player in this historically poor era of Tennessee football could be as universally beloved as Jennings. But he is. And he absolutely should be.
Moments after Saturday’s win, I spoke with someone who has forgotten more about Tennessee football than most of us — even those of us with two decades of experience on this beat — could ever hope to remember. I won’t use his name because I didn’t tell him we were speaking on the record, and those kinds of things matter to me. But he’s someone all of you would know, and he swore to me that Jennings is one of the best competitors he’s ever seen in the Tennessee program.
“He’s unbelievable,” the man told me. “Heart of a lion.”
Jennings was indeed unbelievable on Saturday. He had arguably the best game of his career — and he’s had some great games — and his team needed every bit of it. He technically served as the team’s starting quarterback, and he had a few really nice runs and one well-thrown pass downfield to Callaway that was called back with a penalty.
As usual, though, Jennings did most of his damage at wideout. The 6-foot-3, 220-pound Nashville-area native had a career-high 174 yards and two touchdowns on seven catches, and some of those catches were truly special. Jennings is not a burner, but he is a bull, and his indomitable will to avoid being tackled is special.
Jennings was targeted eight times. Seven of them were completed. He’s had two notable drops that turned into interceptions this season, but his targets-to-completion ratio remains unbelievably high for someone who’s listed No. 1 with a bullet on every opponent’s scouting report.
It’s not fair that Jennings has had to play for Tennessee in this era. He deserved more. But imagine the past few years without him. Perhaps this was the best time for him to be in Knoxville, because he’s given Tennessee fans hope when they’ve had so many reasons to feel despair. He’s appointment television on a team that has been, at times, unwatchable in every other way. And he’s from Tennessee, which means a lot to the fans of this program, as it should.
Then there’s Pruitt — a man born and bred by Tennessee’s biggest rival (Alabama) and a man whose ties to the Vols were non-existent before Mr. Tennessee (Phillip Fulmer) offered him an opportunity to coach them.
I’ve tried to tell people for two years — and admittedly it hasn’t always been an easy message to convey — that this man can coach football. He’s a football guy’s football guy. He’s tough. He had to cut his teeth in the high-school ranks and then as a support staffer at Alabama before getting an opportunity to coach at this level, and he’s done northing but succeed as he’s worked his way up the ladder. He took on a tough task here at Tennessee, and I think the deeply embedded problems in this program shocked him a bit last year, but he’s continued working and he’s put an infinitely better product on the field the past six weeks. This looks nothing like the Tennessee team that opened the season with shocking losses to Georgia State and BYU.
There’s no guarantee Tennessee will finish this season any better than it did last season. Some of the injuries from Saturday’s game could put more pimples on a roster already full of blemishes, and that could be every bit as problematic as it was done the stretch last year.
I’ve already seen enough to believe this guy is capable of winning in the long run, though. This is a healthier culture than it’s been in years, and he’s the man responsible for that. As this roster continues to flip the next two seasons, I think you’ll see more consistent football. For now, though, you still see glimpses.
Saturday’s win over South Carolina doesn’t seem as impressive as last season’s wins over ranked teams Auburn and Kentucky, but it impressed me just as much. There was real adversity in the build-up to that game and throughout the three quarters of the game itself, but the Vols responded and put on more steam every time.
These Gamecocks went to Georgia and beat one of the country’s most talented teams in their own backyard. They gave Alabama a good fight. They fought Florida to the end, had a lead going into the fourth quarter and had some really tough breaks go against them in that loss. South Carolina is a flawed football team but also a good football team. At their best, those Gamecocks are one of the 25 best teams in college football. I’ve seen it, and if you’ve watched them, you’ve seen it, too.
And if you saw Tennessee on Saturday, you should know just how impressive that win was for the Vols.
Stick a pin in this game. Remember it. It may or may not be a direct turning point for this program, but it’s a really big step.
Do the next five games matter? Of course they do.
But Tennessee showed some serious backbone Saturday, and I think we’ll ultimately remember this game as a sign of things to come for this program.
