Whatever your question, tonight the answer is yes.
Are we back? Can we win it all? Is that the best win since ___________? Are these actual questions? Is this really happening?
Can Hendon Hooker win the Heisman? Can Jalin Hyatt? Didn’t we lose like 338 players to the portal and not know who our head coach would be for an entire month? Was that really just 20 months ago?
Did we miss an extra point and fumble away a touchdown and it just didn’t matter? Against Alabama?
Is this really happening?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Tonight in Neyland Stadium, the past, the present, and the future collided, and they made the prettiest orange. It’s tonight, not today, because that thing lasted three hours and fifty-five minutes and one hundred and one points.
It lasted fifteen years, but only once you realized we could actually do it. And that took one drive for each team. Any “maybe we’re not quite ready for Bama yet”s were gone after that. If the Florida streak was the Red Sox, this one was the Cubs: constant futility, little hope, but we’re trying to have a good time anyway.
But tonight, this became the sort of game where you knew, even if the Vols lost it, Tennessee had made its case. The Vols belonged on the national stage, with Bama and thus with anyone. The kind of case where you feel like you can still make the playoffs even if you don’t win.
But we might as well win.
You want more?
Also, remember Cedric Tillman? Do you think Kentucky and Georgia will?
Did Jalin Hyatt really have six catches for 207 yards and five touchdowns? Is that in the conversation for the best game we’ve ever seen a UT wide receiver play, including that time Peerless Price had four for 199 in the national championship?
Remember when Kelley Washington had like 18723104 catches for 238472104720148 yards against LSU and they just kept going to him because it just kept working? Who was the coach of that LSU team, whatever happened to that guy?
That’s right, that’s a 2001 LSU joke! We can even do that now!
Because now, the Vols are at the adult table. And when you think your team can beat anybody? You stop worrying about how long it’s been and start thinking about when we get to play again.
There are thousands of words to be said about this game, thousands more about what’s ahead. It’s a good week to welcome an FCS team to the schedule! I’ve felt for a while Josh Heupel’s Tennessee teams make the sport feel more like basketball, where you’re always just a couple of threes away from things changing. But this felt more like tennis tonight, with every broken serve a gift.
Every stop from a defense was like gold. And we may move to a time where, realistically, the best measure to predict Tennessee’s ultimate success is how many stops they can get. They got three tonight, then added a fourth when Bama missed the field goal. Even against the vaunted Crimson Tide, four was enough. Meanwhile, the Vols only punted once (which worked out great!), but were stopped on fourth down twice and turned it over twice more. And still: both offenses were spectacular. Every Tennessee possession felt like possibility and every Alabama possession felt like a threat.
But in such an even game, the ultimate beauty tonight: all three phases were there in the final minute when Tennessee absolutely had to have it.
Alabama had 1st-and-10 at the 32 yard line with 34 seconds left. And the defense got three straight incompletions, leaving the Tide with a 50-yard field goal that didn’t go in.
Tennessee had 1st-and-10 from the 32 yard line with 15 seconds left. And the offense couldn’t have drawn it up any better: 18 yards to Ramel Keyton, 27 yards to Bru McCoy.
And then special teams, where Chase McGrath wrote his name into Tennessee legend. It wasn’t perfect. But it was good.
Nothing has been perfect for Tennessee in a long time. Some of you all reading this have been following along with us since the Lane Kiffin hiring. We’ve been together through lots of difficult days, interesting though they were. And you learn along the way that it’s not the winning that keeps you around, clearly. It’s the thing itself. The relationship between a team and its fans. The atmosphere. The everything.
This team has put itself in position to do everything. There are no comparisons, there’s no unhealthy connection to the past and no concern about the future. This team is writing its own story, and it’s an incredible one so far. There is so much left to do.
It won’t be perfect. But it can continue to be good.
And right now, Tennessee’s good is good enough to do anything.
Yes, even this.
Yes, even that.
Yes.
Go Vols.
A Tennessee Vol!!
Your computer keys were burning up last night. Fun read! Go Vols!
‘no unhealthy connection to the past and no concern about the future…’ Is there any sweeter spot to find oneself in, in life or football? You mentioned following along since Lane Kiffin… I became a fan in 2007 and got to enjoy one exciting year before this long winter arrived. I found you/Joel/and Incip back in 2014 on the other site and have spent countless hours since enjoying your writing. You are an exemplary fan- a well of patience and perspective with no ill will to the other guys- and I’ve found no other voice out there that strikes the… Read more »
This means a lot to me, thank you very much for that.
I was in Neyland Stadium when Gary Wright’s field goal went “wide right” in 1966 (or did it?), when Bear Bryant’s two-point conversion failed in ’68, when Bill Battle beat his old coach in 1970, and when Condredge fumbled at the end in ’72. Except for more points being scored than in all those games together, last night The Third Saturday in October got back to being what it used to be: two great teams slugging it out for sixty minutes, giving their best and leaving nothing on the field. Thank you, Josh Heupel, Hendon Hooker, Jalin Hyatt, and all… Read more »
Excellent write-up, Will. I may have had as much fun storming the field after Auburn in 1985 and Florida in 1998, but I’ve definitely never had MORE fun than I did in Neyland Saturday night. My kid (a sophomore at UT, who was also on the field post-game, though we weren’t able to find each other in all the mayhem) texted us this morning: “I think I like football now.” Despite my best efforts to raise her the way my dad raised me, she basically only saw Tennessee football as something that made her dad irritated every Saturday. Thanks to… Read more »