Gameday on Rocky Top

(I do love this photo.)

The two biggest questions coming into the Orange Bowl surrounded Tennessee’s uncertainty at quarterback and on defense. Both looked great against Vanderbilt, but Clemson – both by virtue of its #7 ranking and its name – would be another test entirely.

In winning 31-14, both Joe Milton and the Vol defense did more than enough. But the way the possessions played out made it feel a bit different than what we’re used to seeing. Tennessee punted eight times, and Clemson had, you know, 123572148 drives into Tennessee territory.

But, as usual, the story of the game is best told play-for-play. And for both Joe Milton and Tennessee’s defense, the results look even better compared to what we’ve seen before.

Joe Milton vs Clemson & Non-Hendon Hooker Games at UT

Tough acts to follow here aren’t always what they appear; we already know that from Peyton Manning handing off to Tee Martin. But no matter what Joe Milton or any Tennessee quarterback does in the next few years, our appreciation for Hendon Hooker should only grow.

Against Clemson, Joe Milton was 19-of-28 for 251 yards, 9.0 yards per attempt. We’re already spoiled on the “no interceptions” part; Milton added three touchdowns for good measure.

In yards per attempt, Hooker had an amazing ability to shine brightest on the biggest stages. He crossed 9+ yards per attempt 11 times against power five competition the last two years, including seven times against ranked foes:

Hendon Hooker YPA vs Ranked Teams

1. 21 Kentucky: 15.8
2. 22 Alabama: 12.8
3. 22 Florida: 12.5
4. 21 Alabama: 10.1
5. 22 Kentucky: 9.8
6. 21 Florida: 9.6
7. 21 Ole Miss: 9.0

While the 2021 Kentucky game was an insane example of contrasting styles, it’s Hooker’s ability to be at his very, very best against our two biggest rivals that should be remembered most here. There will be plenty of opportunities to come back to this point, especially as he prepares for the NFL Draft.

Maybe every quarterback will start putting up numbers like this in Josh Heupel’s offense at Tennessee; if so, great! But don’t discount what Joe Milton did against Clemson just because it’s not what Hendon Hooker did against Florida and Alabama.

Before Heupel, how often did Tennessee quarterbacks throw for 9+ yards per attempt against ranked teams?

Jarrett Guarantano did it against Auburn in 2018 (10.3). Josh Dobbs did it against Florida in 2016 (10.0). And, in the post-Fulmer era, that’s it.

Hitting 9+ yards per attempt overall from 2009-2020 was rare; I count just 15 times it happened vs power five competition in those 12 seasons. For Milton to have done it against Clemson’s defense with essentially the 2023 wide receiver corps? That’s very good news.

Yards Per Play Allowed & Clemson’s Offense

The news is indeed good on the other side of the ball as well. Clemson’s 484 total yards came on 101 total plays. That’s 4.79 yards per play.

How does that compare to Tennessee’s defensive performances this season?

In yards per play allowed vs power five competition, Tennessee’s defense looks like this:

1. Kentucky 3.25
2. Vanderbilt 3.30
3. Clemson 4.79
4. LSU 4.86
5. Pittsburgh 5.0
6. Missouri 5.56
7. Georgia 6.24
8. Florida 6.83
9. Alabama 6.86
10. South Carolina 7.97

That’s pretty good, especially compared to the way it looked two games earlier. And for Clemson’s offense on the entire year? The 4.79 yards per play they gained against UT’s defense represented their second-lowest total of the year, behind the 4.32 they had at Notre Dame. And against power five competition, their season-high total was the 6.88 they had against North Carolina in the ACC Championship Game, with Cade Klubnik doing most of the work.

So for both Joe Milton and Tennessee’s defense, performances that might’ve felt like they had room for improvement look really, really good when put into context. The Vol defense was as good as anyone against a Clemson offense coming off its best game. And Joe Milton was as good through the air as just about anyone not named Hendon Hooker against a ranked foe.

The future is bright, in part because the Orange Bowl looks even brighter.

So here’s the thing: I’ve never actually written about a Good Football Team before. (For reference: I wrote from 2009 to 2017 or so, give or take a few months. I think. Memory is hazy these days.) Sure, you could argue the first half of Tennessee’s 2016 was a good team; on the other hand, that team gave us Champions of Life. I don’t think I can count that. I enjoyed 2012 way more than anyone had any right to but that team wasn’t good. (I’m not not planning on writing a Milton vs. Bray Tale of the Tape in ::checks calendar:: June? Man, being good at a lot of sports now is weird.)

2007? That season was hilarious and I will always enjoy the drive-it-like-you-stole-it ness of everything after Georgia, but I hadn’t started writing yet. 2001 and 1998 pre-date my Tennessee fandom; they aren’t really my teams in the way they’re Will or Joel’s (or your) teams.

Is there any other season pre-Heupel that would fit? I don’t think so; we had Good Football Moments, but not really Good Football Team.

Enter 2022, or rather, enter 2021 then look behind you. Pruitt wasn’t going to work out; regardless of the process that led us to Pruitt, you can’t run the 2012 Alabama playbook with less talent in 2018 and expect better results; even Alabama wasn’t running the 2012 Alabama playbook.  I still think the process ended up in as good a place as we could’ve hoped for, even if we ended up as College Football Twitter’s main character for a solid three weeks. Regardless: brunch and a desire to just move on did Pruitt in; another season or two would’ve done the trick.

Anyway, back to 2021. What did I know about Josh Heupel? Well, his teams were fun to watch; I probably watched more UCF than I did Tennessee for a year, maybe two. UCF games were reliably fun for a neutral and the 12 lead changes in almost every game didn’t matter to me since I didn’t really root for UCF. Would I call those UCF teams good? Eh. They were fine, and they were fun, and honestly during the Pruitt era “fine” and “fun” were enough for me to turn Heupel into appointment viewing.

And hey, that’s what 2021 was! It was fun, and it was fine. Watching Heupel’s teams a little more closely made me realize he tries to coach teams with a high floor; run enough plays and be successful enough to score on a couple more possessions than your opponent and that’ll be enough to beat most teams you have more talent than.  For all Tennessee’s struggles, there was still talent. The questions were twofold: 1) could Heupel recruit enough to raise the talent floor? 2) could Heupel get teams that had more talent? We saw flashes of the latter—Georgia 2021 being the best example, even if they were never winning that game—but we didn’t know if that was going to be anything past a flash.

I thought going into 2022 that 8-4 would be, you know, pretty good! We might be able to hang with Alabama or Georgia for a half but we weren’t deep enough, and I guess Kentucky or LSU or Florida are good so maybe beat one of them too, win the rest, and we can call that momentum. That sounds good, right?

Well.

About that.

It didn’t really start to click with me this Tennessee team was a Good Football Team until the third quarter of the Alabama game. That timing is a little weird, right? They blitzed LSU (and we didn’t think that LSU was any good until November, so while ending the LSU game before noon Central time was impressive we didn’t know if it was good, beat Florida but in a way that really didn’t feel comfortable, and even the first half against Alabama was the kind of early-game carnage we had seen before.

But the third quarter? That’s when I realized Alabama was emptying the tank against us. They didn’t have a choice if they wanted to win the game; that’s when I realized we belonged. We were a Good Football Team.

Of course, we know how that game ended, and we know what it feels like to be back at the top of the mountain, if only for a few days. Yeah, it was only a few days, and yep South Carolina sucked (it looked like a Madden-style No Way Game), but 10-2? That’s pretty good. 

Demolishing Vanderbilt after losing Hendon Hooker? Proof of concept this is sustainable. We didn’t necessarily need to know that, but another hallmark of a Good Football Team is being able to handle key losses.

While we’re here: beating Clemson was ….comfortable? As comfortable as three missed field goals by Clemson could be considered comfortable. It felt unhurried, like the team knew how to play to win instead of playing to not lose. Will talked about this a lot already; I’ll come back to it once I knock some of the rust off.

I have no idea where it goes from here; it looks sustainable and I don’t think it’ll stop being fun, but it’s worth looking back to remember how far we came. This whole Good Football Team is pretty new for a lot of us; it’s okay to take some time to reflect.

There is, on one hand, a finality to bowl games. The story of your season is now closed, the aftertaste settling in. And even a top-tier bowl’s ability to endure on its own merits will soon pivot hard to the 12-team playoff, where a game like #6 Tennessee vs #7 Clemson would take place, much to everyone’s preference.

So in some ways, this Orange Bowl win is already a relic. It already belonged on a list of the highest-ranked bowl match-ups the Vols have participated in since 1985, topped only by Tennessee’s peak from 1995-99. And in victory, it joins Happy New Years like Ohio State in the Citrus Bowl from that 1995 season, or beating Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl following 1989. A Top 10 win to put the exclamation point on your year.

But the story of this particular season is tied up to so many others. A stubborn, beautiful interconnectedness of college football, and maybe all sports. So there are a thousand stories to be told about how this team separated itself from the last 15 years. But there are a thousand more about how they also positioned themselves alongside the best of Tennessee’s best.

Eleven wins separates you by itself. In my lifetime, that’s 1989, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2001, and now 2022. There’s also who made up those 11; in Tennessee’s case, wins over six ranked teams ties the program record from 1998.

If you’re looking for the most impressive company this team can now keep, I think it’s this:

Multiple Top 7 Wins at Tennessee since 1965

• 1985: #1 Auburn, #2 Miami
• 1989: #6 UCLA, #4 Auburn
• 1998: #2 Florida, #7 Georgia, #2 Florida State
• 2022: #3 Alabama, #7 Clemson

There are words to be said about Joe Milton, and we’ll have an entire off-season to do more of that. Some of them will include how spoiled we quickly become, when a performance hitting nine yards per attempt with three touchdowns and no interceptions against Clemson is viewed as, “Pretty good start, maybe some room for improvement.”

He’ll enter spring practice as QB1, and be joined by an infusion of talent on both sides of the ball. It is, of course, too early to say exactly what that will look like on either side. But one more word here, for this defense, the 2022 version.

In the next-to-last game of the regular season, Tennessee gave up nine touchdowns in ten drives at South Carolina. The Gamecocks are still better than we thought at the time, despite their Gator Bowl loss yesterday. How high is their September 30 visit on your most-looked-forward-to-games list next year?

But before it all becomes about next year, in the two remaining games of this one? With questions about the culture circling, the Vol defense returned one surprise for another. Vanderbilt scored zero points in 14 drives. Then Clemson, in their 14 drives, scored a single touchdown. Twenty-eight drives, one touchdown. Believe that.

Believe is the word, now etched both in stone and our hearts. The primary work of this team was already done before the Orange Bowl, and no negative outcome could take away Tennessee’s proximity to “back”, or our belief that this program can make a 12-team playoff.

But a win – this win – gives even more sight to faith. This morning, in thinking about the finality of Tennessee’s 2022 season, I find myself even more grateful for the ways it already has been transformative, and could continue to be into the future. In the last 15 years, we’ve caught brief glimpses of the promised land; maybe they were a mirage, maybe they were a sliver of the real thing. In 2009 when Lane Kiffin’s team beat Georgia, we could tell ourselves maybe we never really left. In 2011 when Tennessee’s offense looked so incredible for 60 minutes against Cincinnati, only to lose two of its best players to injury immediately after. And those six weeks in 2016, when we were most convinced we were crossing over and thus most disappointed when we ultimately didn’t.

And then this team, including more than a handful of players who stayed through our most uncertain times to come. This team, who played well enough last year to make us believe we might catch a glimpse of it in the off-season. This team, who rejected the notion that this program was ever in exile, left the wilderness with the quickness, then needed no bridge to cross directly into the promised land.

Just one more year ahead, it will be a land flowing with 12-team brackets, Texas and Oklahoma, and nine game SEC schedules. It will not only look different, but feel it, all our rhythms adjusting to a new reality and new definitions of fruitfulness. New opportunities to chase the biggest prize of all.

And this team – this team – made us believe we can do it. First by faith, then by sight. And, after last night? More than ever.

Go Vols.

It’s still wild to me, and quite a pleasure, to be typing “Orange Bowl Preview” into that box up there. The incredible ride of this football season makes its final approach tomorrow night, already secure in our hearts, ready to bridge the gap into next year. For an encore, the 2022 Vols can earn the sixth 11-win season since 1970, and join this impressive list:

Multiple Top 10 Wins in a Season (since 1972)

• 2006: #9 California, #10 Georgia
• 1999: #10 Georgia, #10 Alabama
• 1998: #2 Florida, #7 Georgia, #10 Arkansas, #2 Florida State
• 1989: #6 UCLA, #4 Auburn, #10 Arkansas
• 1985: #1 Auburn, #2 Miami

Thin the list to Top 7 wins, which the Vols would have a pair of if they beat Clemson, and you’re down to the last three on that list, and this season. This, again, is the generational company this team is keeping.

How can it happen? Three big questions for tomorrow night:

What’s the intersection of Tennessee’s offense without Hooker and Hyatt with how much better Tennessee’s defense can play to make up the difference? The Vols come to Miami leading the nation in points per game, yards per play, and are the only non-service-academy to average 10+ yards per pass attempt. If there’s a drop-off – hard to do anything else when you’re number one – how much of that could be replaced by an improvement from Tennessee’s defense?

Can Cade Klubnik join Anthony Richardson, Bryce Young, Stetson Bennett, and Spencer Rattler as quarterbacks to average 8.8+ yards per attempt against the Vol defense? After those four, no one else hit more than 6.7 against UT this season. Richardson, Bennett, and Rattler all went for 10+.

Klubnik hit 11.6 yards per attempt against North Carolina; D.J. Uiagalelei peaked at 9.0 against Wake Forest, 8.8 against Florida State. His lows came in the two losses, by far: 4.9 with Notre Dame keeping everything in front of them, and a disastrous 3.4 while completing just 28% of his passes against South Carolina.

One of the biggest places we may see this intersection: Tennessee’s explosiveness. The Vols are first in the nation in 30+ yard plays with 50, 4.2 per game. Hilariously, North Texas and Western Kentucky are tied for second with 47, both having played 14 games. The Vols still found explosiveness with Joe Milton at quarterback through the ground game at Vanderbilt. Can Tennessee still take the top off against Clemson’s defense?

Can Tennessee use Clemson’s own success against them? Coaches who have won at an extremely high level are often slowest to change, because why would you? So as college football has become more aggressive overall in going for it on fourth down, Clemson…has not.

On fourth down, the Tigers have gone for it just nine times. They are one of just four teams in the single digits there nationally, and the only one who has played 13 games. Clemson punts 4.8 times per game. The Vols, by comparison, punt just 2.6 times per game, sixth fewest in the nation.

Tennessee’s success sometimes comes down to how many stops they get. The Tigers, at least on paper, appear much more willing to give you the ball back.

Will what stops Tennessee best – sacks and penalties – show up again? We first looked at this when the Vols were set to take on Georgia: Tennessee punted just six times in wins over Florida, LSU, Alabama, and Kentucky. Five of those came with UT leading by two-plus possessions. But four of them happened because of sacks or offensive pass interference penalties. Then in Athens, Tennessee punted four times, three because of sacks or penalties.

Against Missouri, the Vols punted out of halftime after a sack. But their other punt came when leading by 25 points. At South Carolina, with every possession clearly valuable, the Vols punted down 14-7 after a holding call, punted on the opening drive of the third quarter, then punted on another offensive pass interference call.

So with Hendon Hooker as the starter, Tennessee punted 15 times in seven SEC games. Of those 15 punts, 10 happened because of a sack or penalty. Two others came with the Vols leading by 14+ points.

With Joe Milton at Vanderbilt, the Vols punted four times, and never due to a sack or penalty. But two of those came after UT was ahead 42+ points. Again: it’ll look different, and it previously looked like the best offense in America. But I’ll be curious to see how the pass protection, in particular, changes with Milton involved. That remains Tennessee’s greatest area of improvement from 2021, and could be a deciding factor in the game that’ll bridge 2022 and 2023.

It’s an incredible opportunity at the end of an incredible season. One more for this group’s story, and our first look at what’s to come.

Friday, 8:00 PM ET, ESPN.

Go Vols.

When your guys don’t win or make the podium for these national awards despite compelling and obvious arguments, you learn to look elsewhere for validation. And while I can’t promise all of my 25-year-old thoughts on the Heisman Trophy are entirely healthy, I do think it’s the better option overall. Don’t give others the ultimate say on what your performance was or wasn’t. The greatness of Hendon Hooker, or Eric Berry, or Peyton Manning isn’t first or last defined by what individual awards they did or didn’t win. Perhaps at some point, a Tennessee player will win the Heisman. If they do, that’ll be great. But I wouldn’t consider it redemptive or validating, for that player or any of these others.

And at the same time, when one of our guys does win, we don’t miss opportunities to celebrate. Today, that’s joyfully Jalin Hyatt. Hyatt of, “Will he take a step forward?” in August of this year. Hyatt, who got behind Alabama’s secondary a couple times in 2020, first flashing potential he stepped into with both feet this season. Hyatt, who had two catches for 28 yards in the opener against Ball State, then went nuclear.

There are some truly ridiculous portraits of Hyatt’s season, ones we’ll all spend more time in the off-season breaking down. One of my favorites: in the four-game stretch of LSU, Alabama, UT Martin, and Kentucky, Hyatt caught 11 touchdown passes. If his entire season was just those four games, he would’ve finished tied for fourth on UT’s single-season touchdown list. At Wide Receiver U.

Maybe Hyatt will finish it off in the bowl game; he needs 32 yards to pass Robert Meachem for the single season yardage record, and with a huge 10+ catch game he would pass Marcus Nash for the single season receptions record. Or maybe he’ll consider his NFL future and sit this one out; if he and Cedric Tillman both go that route, we’ll get a fuller look at the 2023 offense right away.

But one of my favorite numbers for him is currently secure: in yards per game, Jalin Hyatt is currently the only Vol receiver to ever finish a season averaging 100+ yards per contest. Robert Meachem has this record with 1,298 yards in 13 games (99.8 per). Hyatt is sitting on 1,267 in 12 games (105.6 per).

There are so many great stories at wide receiver at Tennessee, so many additional factors in certain eras. For a while, “guys who played with Manning” was a whole category in this department. “Guys who played for Heupel,” may become its own thing too. And there has, for sure, been a plethora of straight up NFL talent come through Knoxville; plenty of it is still in the league right now.

But already, Jalin Hyatt put together a season that can stand shoulder to shoulder with any of them, and above them all in some ways. Not just because he won the Biletnikoff. But because of what we’ve already seen him do every single week, at a place where wide receivers have often done it better than anywhere else.

What a pleasure it’s been to watch Jalin Hyatt. And will continue to be, wherever we see him next.

Go Vols.

Congrats to longtime friend of the blog birdjam, who takes home our regular season pick ’em prize by a healthy margin. His 2,181 confidence points earned first place by 54 points over PAVolFan in a hotly contested battle for second place. Also, shout out to birdjam, cnyvol, spartans100, and aaron217, all of whom hit 70+% in picking games straight up this year.

The Top 10 from the regular season is at the bottom of this post – we now turn our attention to the postseason, where 40+ bowl games await. Our bowl pick ’em is now live and free to play at Fun Office Pools. If you’re new with us, we pick each bowl game straight up using confidence points: 42 points assigned to the bowl you feel most confident in, one point for the bowl you feel least confident in, etc. It’s free to play and lots of fun – you can join at the link, and leave any questions in the comments below.

Regular Season Pick ‘Em Top 10

1. birdjam – 2,181 points
2. PAVolFan – 2,127
3. wedflatrock – 2,125
4. UNDirish60 – 2,123
5. aaron217 – 2,122
6. cnyvol – 2,120
7. jeremy.waldroop – 2,102
8. Jahiegel – 2,097
9. spartans100 – 2,092
10. jfarrar90 – 2,078

The most important work this season is already done: the Vols are back in the championship chase, and would be preparing for round one as we speak in a 12-team playoff, soon to become the clear answer to a season’s success. A job well done earns additional rewards: this team is in a New Year’s Six bowl for the first time, equivalent to the old BCS model where Tennessee last appeared following the 1999 season.

For Tennessee and now Clemson, the quarterbacks will give this one a feel of both present and future. Bowl games always create both the aftertaste and the first assumption. I do wonder if there’s a bit of either/or for Clemson in this one: the Tigers finished in the Top 5 and the CFP six years in a row from 2015-2020, with two national championships. But last season they went 10-3, finishing 14th. They’re obviously out of the playoff, but did retake the ACC and can earn another Top 5 finish if they close it out in the Orange Bowl. Or, with a loss, you’ve got back-to-back three-loss campaigns. That hasn’t happened at Clemson since 2010-11.

There’s a bit of full circle here: when last we met following the 2003 season, the Vols narrowly missed a bigger prize. Tennessee was sixth in the AP poll at the end of the regular season, eighth in the BCS. The Vols, Gators, and Dawgs were in a three-way tie for the SEC East, awarded to Georgia on its higher BCS ranking (seventh) the previous week. But after LSU beat them 34-13 in Atlanta, the Vols were the second-highest SEC team in the final rankings.

Because the Sugar Bowl had the national championship in 2003, there was no auto-bid for the highest remaining SEC team after LSU. And Miami was still both elite and in the Big East; they were ranked behind the Vols in the final rankings thanks to UT’s win in Coral Gables, but that extra conference champ bid left only a single at-large spot, which went to #5 Ohio State.

And from there, shenanigans: the Citrus Bowl took Georgia, the Outback took the home-grown Gators, and the #6 Vols fell all the way to the Peach Bowl, the same place they ended the previous season at 8-4. The opponent was unranked Clemson, trying to ascend in Tommy Bowden’s fifth year. There was a fight in pregame warmups, and Tennessee finished the game with 10 penalties for 119 yards. The Tigers won 27-14, and what could’ve been another Top 5 finish for Tennessee and a clear return to the program’s best days after 2002 was left instead with a frustrating aftertaste.

If you quantify those very best days by how high the Vols finished in the nation, the 2022 squad has a chance to join elite company. Tennessee finished in the Top 5 in 1967 and again in 1970. Since then:

Top 5 Finishes at Tennessee Since 1970:

• 1985: The SEC champion SugarVols went from unranked to #4 in the final poll after blowing out #2 Miami in New Orleans
• 1989: Another unranked-to-SEC-champs team, the CobbWebb Vols went 11-1 and earned a three-way tie for the league title, finishing #5 after beating then-SWC champs #10 Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl
• 1995: Peyton Manning’s sophomore season, the Vols lost at Florida but beat everyone else, including #4 Ohio State in the Citrus Bowl, to finish 11-1 and #3.
• 1998: The BCS national champions were #10 in preseason but #4 after beating Florida, and ran the table for the program’s first consensus national title since 1951. Tennessee went to #1 on November 9 and never relinquished it.
• 2001: A wild ride with one infamous and two memorable finishes down the stretch: #7 on November 18, #2 on December 2 after beating Florida, #8 after losing to LSU in Atlanta, then finishing at #4 after blowing out Michigan in the Citrus Bowl.

The work is already done this year in getting the program not just out of a 15-year wilderness, but back to the championship conversation. And Tennessee can also end it as a team not just in-the-hunt, but an 11-win, Top 5 squad that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anyone in the modern era behind 1998.

To get there, all of those five teams had to get one final Top 10 victory. The 2001 team got theirs in Gainesville in December after September 11, then beat #17 Michigan in the bowl game. The rest played a Top 10 squad in the postseason; it’s the nature of the beast in having a season this good.

If the Vols knock off #7 Clemson, they’ll also tie 1998 for the most wins over ranked teams in a single season at UT:

Wins vs Ranked Teams

• 6 in 1998: #17 Syracuse, #2 Florida, #7 Georgia, #10 Arkansas, #23 Mississippi State, #2 Florida State
• 5 in 2022: #17 Pittsburgh, #20 Florida, #25 LSU, #3 Alabama, #19 Kentucky
• 4 in 2001: #14 LSU, #12 South Carolina, #2 Florida, #17 Michigan
• 4 in 1991: #21 UCLA, #23 Mississippi State, #13 Auburn, #5 Notre Dame

The 2022 Vols have already tied the 1991 Vols by getting in seven ranked-vs-ranked games in a single season.

Even in the age of opt-outs, the bowl game gets the last and first word on a team’s present and future. This one can also make an even deeper connection with Tennessee’s past, putting the 2022 Vols with some incredible company.

We’ll be delighted to see a Tennessee team like this in a 12-team playoff. But until then, this Orange Bowl against Clemson will certainly do. And with a win, the Vols can continue to show that there aren’t too many Tennessee teams like this, period.

The 2022 Vols have given us an incredible journey. All that’s left is the destination.

Go Vols.