Hey, now! That’s the kind of free-spirited failure we can get behind!
Tennessee came out against LSU on Saturday night in Neyland Stadium with a different attitude, a different mindset and looked for a half like a much different football team.
Then, the storms came and washed away all those good vibes that began with the second half-opening kickoff lost in the blustering wind and buckets of rain. A three-and-out series that went backward and ended against the Vols’ own goal line, a flipped field and Tigers touchdown later, it was 23-10.
After all that — unfortunately for Tennessee’s spirited fans rejuvenated from Butch Jones’ firing last Sunday — it wasn’t a different team in orange. It was the same, ol’ Vols.
Butch is gone, but his legacy lives on!
They couldn’t pass the ball consistently, they couldn’t block anybody with the shadow of an offensive line, they couldn’t get key stops, they couldn’t go an entire series without a crippling penalty, and they couldn’t catch a kick.
For every big play like the Marquez Calloway drive to end the first half and the 60-yard Jeff George grab later, there were so many eye-covering blunders that kept the Vols from being a true threat at all in the second half. The stink of the Jones era eventually smothered the good vibes, manifesting itself with UT’s lack of halftime adjustments (for the, oh, 10th time in 10 games this season) and with Larry Scott’s miffed play calling.
Jarrett Guarantano may be the quarterback of the future in Knoxville, but he’s not the answer for the present. He may be nicknamed “The Guarantee,” but the only thing assured this year is that Tennessee is going to lose. You can pretty much set your watch by that, and it’s been a skeleton crew of Vols that’s hard to watch, just to be honest.
So many miscues and so few difference-makers led to loss No. 7 on the season. Thank God that Jones is gone, and this team looked better in the first half than it has in a long time, but Tennessee now can just beg 2017 to go away.
There will be no bowl game, just when we thought we’d moved past those days in this program. There are so many roster questions and holes that it’s hard to hold much optimism without a complete culture change. The only thing that matters is next week’s Pride Game, which means so much more than just beating Vanderbilt; the Vols will try to keep from being the only team in school history to lose eight regular-season games.
At this point, it may seem small; but it’s all that’s left.
The strength-and-conditioning failures from Jones’ tenure will be ghouls that haunt this program for at least a year and maybe more. As much as we hated and denied the anonymous NFL scout who told SEC Country’s Mike Griffith that this was a “soft” team before the season started, he could not have been more right. When you put those two factors together, you’ve got a team that gets hurt too much, injured far too much, and gets pushed around on the field no matter who’s in the lineup.
Believe it or not, the Tennessee D played well for much of the night against a plodding-but-efficient LSU offense. Nigel Warrior, Daniel Bituli and Co. were all over the field. They made plays they haven’t made for much of the season and played with a different level of excitement, happy perhaps to be shed of their head coach.
It was the closest thing to a Five-Star Heart performance that we’ve seen all year. And it was still nowhere near enough to finish anywhere near respectfully on the scoreboard. This team needs much more separation from this forgettable season than five days.
I found myself watching the clock Saturday night, just wanting the game to end. I’ll do the same next week wanting the season to follow suit. Just go away, let us be, let us try to do this thing over yet again. Because there isn’t anything left to play for.
So, we look toward the future. It’s hard to know what we’ll find there. What kind of identity will this team take under a new coach? How many of the recruits will be around to see that happen? Will mystery, MIA guys like Marcus Tatum, Jauan Jennings, Drew Richmond, Quinten Dormady and others be a part of the program? Can we actually see players get stronger, develop and improve? Is the quarterback of the future even on this year’s roster?
Unfortunately for Tennessee fans, we’re left with questions. But we can at least take solace that unanswered questions are always, unequivocally better than the wrong answer, and Jones is the wrong answer. We see that every game with this disjointed, undisciplined team that plays without any direction whatsoever. We don’t know what we’ve got on the roster because the offensive scheme is so poor and the gaps on defense are so great that it’s impossible to see what 2018 may hold.
All we know is it’s going to be different than this, and thank God for that. We have to take “different” because even though we don’t know if it’s going to be better, it’s simply hard for any of us to believe that it can be worse than what we saw Saturday night, what we’ve seen all year.
Yes, it was so much better against the Tigers than it has been. And it was still a 30-10 loss. Think about that, Vols fans. We can’t even be happy about moral victories anymore; we’re stuck with finding happiness in maybes. We’re forced to live in the past and the future because the present is rife with failure.
You wonder why there was so little talk about Tennessee-LSU this week in Knoxville. It’s because nobody wanted it to come, and, once it got here, even the excitement came and went like a firework, bright and sparkly before quickly disappearing. Like has been the case for much of the past 15 years, we have to take our joy in everything about the football program but the actual football.
So, leave us alone. Thank God that’s over, right? Now, let us get back to tracking planes and following leads for every Joe Fan the Source Man who knows Jon Gruden’s wife’s brother-in-law’s cousin’s mother. Let us stake out airports and wear out our F5 buttons and look for any glimmer of joy in the hope that something good is going to come our way; that something can change this infinite sadness; that different days are nigh.
Hope is what we do best. It’s all we have.
