Editor’s note: With my esteemed colleagues taking care of the heavy postgame lifting as I’m handling my national college football obligations on Saturday, I wanted to do something a little different. Each Sunday from now through the end of the year, we’ll take a last look at the game before, pointing out some positives as we move through the various phases of the Jeremy Pruitt rebuild.
We’ll call it Sunday Best. Hope you guys enjoy…
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There weren’t a lot of things to be excited about after Saturday’s sleepwalking victory over UTEP where it looked like the Tennessee Vols failed to wake up following a night out on the Strip.
Winning 24-0 against arguably the worst FBS team in the nation is nothing to be thrilled about. But with Florida coming to Neyland Stadium next Saturday night, style points don’t matter anymore. The only takeaway from Saturday is there is still so much to be worked on.
Jeremy Pruitt acknowledged as much in his man-of-few-words mode following the game when he did his postgame interview with the SEC Network. He said there’s far too much for Tennessee to work on internally to worry about Florida. He believes if the Vols take care of themselves, they can take care of a lot of issues.
We’ll see on Saturday.
But the past two weekends were all about fact-finding missions. Who can help this team win the important games? Can this team win important games?
The answer to those questions may very well be “nobody this year” and “nope, not this year,” but those aren’t acceptable answers to Pruitt and this staff. Say what you will about this team, but it’s obvious that Pruitt knows football, and that the Vols are going to play real hard-nosed football once they get the players in the right places and the trenches fixed. This year’s roster simply doesn’t have the horses, but the brand of ball the Vols want to play — whether they can play it in 2018 or not — is encouraging.
One of the building blocks for this rebuild was on full display against the Miners in sophomore running back Ty Chandler.
This was a player coveted by Alabama, Georgia and others a couple of years ago when Butch Jones plucked him out of Nashville. Unlike a lot of highly ranked players on this roster, he doesn’t look like a “miss.” If anything, he’s the most dynamic player on the entire roster, and we got a glimpse of what he can do Saturday.
I don’t care that it was against UTEP; that matters none. What Chandler brings to the offense is a dimension the Vols haven’t had since Lamarcus Coker, who just happens to be the last player to break off a run like Chandler’s 81-yard touchdown yesterday.
But take that run away for a moment. On his other runs, he had 77 yards on 11 carries, an average of (even I can do this one…) 7 yards per carry.
We’ve spent the past couple of games oohing and ahhing about how good Tim Jordan looks and that he can be a primary back in this offense, and we all fell in love with Jeremy Banks and his hard-nosed running. He looked good at times again against UTEP, though it looked to me like the officials blew the call on his ruled fumble at the goal line. Regardless, he’s got to do a better job taking care of the ball.
Madre London looks like a quality stopgap this year too, even though this will be his only year in orange.
But no matter how those guys looked at times throughout the season’s first couple of games, they aren’t Chandler. He’s deceptively shifty, and he is bigger than you think. Most importantly, he possesses the kind of breakaway speed Tennessee needs to produce big plays in the running game. Hopefully, as the season progresses, this offensive line will improve, and if it does, Chandler’s upside gets higher and higher.
He’s the kind of player who can win you a game against a Florida or South Carolina if he breaks free.
The only other players on UT’s offense who have that kind of different-level ability are receivers Marquez Callaway and Jordan Murphy.
After getting concussed in the second quarter against West Virginia, the Vols were cautious with Chandler the past couple of weeks. They unleashed him against UTEP, and he is an X-factor to be reckoned with against the Gators. If he’s not a major part of the game plan, something’s wrong.
He will be.
“Ty is a guy that he’s a pretty instinctive runner,” Pruitt said in the postgame interview, according to GoVols247’s Patrick Brown. “He’s got good vision, but he’s got good speed, so he got out there and done a good job finishing that run. It’s a good thing he did, because I’m not sure that we wouldn’t have gotten another penalty before we got in the end zone, so I’m glad he got it to the end zone.”
As we’ve discussed before, this season is about finding those pieces of the puzzle for building blocks, not only this year but next season, too. Against ETSU, we watched a defense that forced turnovers and turned them into points. That defense pitched a shutout against UTEP, but the turnovers were nowhere to be found.
Murphy had a huge game against the Buccaneers but barely made a noise on Saturday.
Callaway has been a consistent weapon, and Jarrett Guarantano is the no-doubt starting quarterback for this team in ’18 and in the future.
The running back room looks good for the future, and hopefully, after Saturday, we see who the leader of that group is going to be.
To be fair to Chandler, though, legends aren’t forged against the UTEP Miners. They’re bad — really bad — and all the mistakes on offense, the line issues and the ability to finish drives kept anybody from being truly happy with Saturday’s outcome.
Next weekend is the season’s first opportunity to make a name for himself. A year ago, with John Kelly in the backfield, Chandler had to play a support role. He’ll have to do the same at times this year with so many players who should get carries for UT. But the Vols need to ride the player who can turn a game in their favor in a hurry. The Gators don’t have a lot of players like him on their offense, either.
Look for Chandler to get a load of touches next weekend if this offensive coaching staff is confident. Of course, a lot of his success will be determined by the play of his offensive line, but Chandler has a window to become one of the most beloved players on this football team despite a difficult season.
Hopefully, he takes advantage.