Tennessee did a noble thing on Saturday after Hurricane Irma by putting “Florida Strong” on the back of their helmets.
Unfortunately for the Vols, they were Tennessee Soft in key moments against the Florida Gators, failing to be the aggressor until too late and losing on a 63-yard missile of a Hail Mary from Feleipe Franks to Tyrie Cleveland on the final play of the game.
It was a very familiar way to lose.
After all, this is the Vols. And those were the Gators.
Even when Florida isn’t the FLORIDA of old, Tennessee can’t take advantage and move beyond them in the SEC East.
Inexplicable mistakes cost the Vols in this one, and, for that reason, the “fire Butch Jones” crowd will only grow. This Tennessee team was better than that Florida team, plain and simple. Yet, none of that mattered. Tennessee found a way to mess it up when it mattered most.
Just look at the costly mistakes that marred UT’s chances, even before the eye-covering, cringe-worthy finale.
Losing 6-3 and facing a 1st-and-goal from the 1-yard line, UT refused to give the football to savage running back John Kelly a single time. The Vols didn’t even get to attempt a game-tying field goal because Quinten Dormady threw one of his three interceptions on third down for a momentum-crushing play.
When the Vols finally scored a touchdown on a brilliant Kelly run, he gave the crowd the Gator chomp, drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that led to a great return, a short field and a UF touchdown. For a great player, that was a costly, stupid mistake.
But, even then, Tennessee refused to quit. Kelly and Co. took the ball right down the field, and Dormady found Ethan Wolf for a touchdown to trim the lead to three again.
After a fantastic interception late in the game where Nigel Warrior got his hand on the football, tipping it up to allow Rashaan Gaulden to pick off the football, the Vols once again marched down to the 10-yard line. Rather than run Kelly, who’d gassed the Gators defense, the Vols threw it three more times. The worst thing about that for UT is the play was there on a second-down pass to Kelly, who dropped the would-be, game-winning touchdown. He’d have walked in. Then, Marquez Callaway couldn’t haul in a perfect fade on the next play.
After an errant throw went wide to Kelly, the Vols tied the game 20-20 with under a minute to go, thinking surely it would go into overtime, where they’d have a marked advantage with Kelly.
But that’s not what happened.
Somehow, a Bob Shoop defense that had been very good for much of the day, let Tyrie Cleveland behind the safeties. Franks showed his cannon arm with a pass that traveled 60-65 yards in the air into the outstretched arms of his receiver, and all Micah Abernathy and Warrior could do was put their heads in their hands as Florida celebrated.
It was an embarrassing finish to an embarrassing loss that saw the players bring their team all the way back with a frantic fourth quarter and then lose. It was hard to watch, and it’s going to be hard to relive over the course of the next year or more. Think about how much UT fans have let Georgia have it following the Dobbs-nail boot Hail Mary last year. This is that, except it’s Florida.
Yeah, it’s Florida.
For some reason, the Gators play with that same ol’ swagger against Tennessee every year. They aren’t good, but the Vols make them good. They make coaching blunders, wait too long to turn up the heat and then bank on everything going perfectly down the stretch to win.
They got burned on Saturday. The team that leads the nation with five comeback wins from 10-point deficits in the past two years got ready to shoot the moon again, only to find a broken arrow in the quiver.
That’s not even mentioning Dormady’s three interceptions and three missed field goals that could have swung the game in Tennessee’s favor time after time. There were just too many blunders, but there were also plenty of players who weren’t relied on to make plays until it was almost too late.
If you’re a defensive coordinator, how do you not play your safeties way back, guarding against the prayer of a pass? If you’re the offensive coordinator, how do you continue to line up in the shotgun formation in short-yardage situations and fail to give the football to Kelly when points are on the line? If you’re the head coach, how do you allow this to happen?
There was criticism right before the season from an NFL scout who anonymously told a reporter who covers the Vols that several Vols were soft. I don’t believe that’s the case. They maybe made some dumb plays on Saturday like letting Cleveland by them or drawing unneccessary unsportsmanlike penalties that wound up with devastating consequences, but they didn’t play soft.
This team coached soft. Jones coached soft. Offensive coordinator Larry Scott coached soft. And on the biggest play of the game, somehow UT’s hard-nosed defense softened just enough to do the only thing it couldn’t afford to do.
#Vols HC Butch Jones: “It’s on me, we have to do a better job on our overall discipline, our fundamentals, our details.”
— Mike Griffith (@MikeGriffith32) September 16, 2017
When you have a young but talented team, the coaching staff needs to treat you like you’re talented a lot more than treat you like you’re young. That didn’t happen on Saturday, and the wrong team was celebrating because of it if you’re a Vols fan.
Two years after Tennessee found an impossible way to lose on a 63-yard pass to Antonio Callaway on a 4th-and-14 play when it looked like it had the game won, the Vols found another way to get beat on a 63-yard pass that rained down from the heavens into the arms of Cleveland on Ben Hill Griffin Stadium’s end zone turf.
Get ready for the criticism to rain down on Jones and Co. for finding another way to lose an important game; one where the Vols made enough plays to win but also enough mistakes to lose. When that happens, it comes down to the things that happened throughout the course of the game you look back on and shake your head.
