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Sunday Stats: Winning streaks, third down, and ranking Guarantano’s performance

Jarrett Guarantano

1-0! Feels good!

Don’t take a seven game winning streak for granted

The historical benchmarks for a Tennessee team looking for success typically go, “Since 2015-16, since 2007, since 2004, since 2001, since 1998.” Seven wins in a row? Jeremy Pruitt’s Vols join 2015-16 as the only team(s) to accomplish that since 2001. And this is just the 10th seven game winning streak for the Vols in the last 35 years:

Tennessee will be an underdog at Georgia in two weeks, but could become the just eighth Vol group since 1985 with an eight game winning streak if they beat Missouri on Saturday.

How hard is it to win at 1-of-11 on third down?

At least in Tennessee’s own history, it’s so unusual it’s hard to find a good comparison; as we noted in the postgame last night, usually that kind of performance gets you beat by 30+ points.

Four years ago, the Vols beat Kentucky with just one third down conversion…but they only had five attempts all game, that November offense running at its best-in-the-nation rate. If you’re looking for victory, I can find only two other candidates: a 2-of-15 slog when the Vols almost lost to UAB in Derek Dooley’s first season, and a 3-of-14 performance against, you guessed it, South Carolina in the black jerseys the year before. Consider how much more the Vols could’ve won that game by…which is a sentence I’d like to entertain for this year’s team as well.

All that to say: going 1-of-11 on third down is unusual by itself, and beating an SEC team on the road while you do it is downright stupid, which fits this year quite nicely, thanks.

Where does last night rank for Jarrett Guarantano?

National stats are kind of worthless with only 72 teams having taken a snap so far. Guarantano’s 259 yards ranks 18th nationally as a ypg average at the moment, but obviously wouldn’t finish there. The best comparison for JG right now is Past JG.

Tennessee’s quarterback has a pair of games on his resume that will be fairly difficult to top:

Unless JG goes off in one of our biggest games this season, he’s unlikely to turn heads in the same way he did at Auburn. And I’m all for him throwing for 400+ again, it’s just highly unusual around here.

But after those two games? Guarantano played really well off the bench against South Carolina last year (11-of-19 for 229) and had similar numbers in the 2018 win over Kentucky (12-of-20 for 197). But among games he started, I think yesterday was his third best performance as a Vol: 19-of-31 for 259 with a TD, a rushing TD, and no picks, with the game-winning touchdown strike in the fourth quarter. It clearly could’ve been better, though some percentage of that responsibility belongs to not having Jennings and Callaway out there. But compared to JG’s past, I thought it was solid.