The Progress You Seek Is in Front of You

There’s no escaping the kinds of conversations we have after a loss like that. Losing to Alabama by 30+ points was, sadly, one of the more normal things about yesterday in Neyland Stadium; the Vols have now lost the last five in this series by 39, 38, 37, 22, and 31. When it happens in your coach’s third year, you have to ask about progress. When the coach is asked about progress, he has to say we’ve made some. When fans hear the coach say we’ve made some, we go back to that list of scores, rinse repeat.

We could have painful conversations about how to narrowly define that progress against Alabama (did you know 17 points for the Tennessee offense is tied for the second-most the Vols have scored in regulation in this rivalry since the seven game winning streak ended in 2001?!?! See, you don’t want to have this conversation.)

But it’s more helpful, especially here at the bye week, to take the most obvious lesson of 2020: we’re not ready to measure progress primarily by what we do against Alabama and Georgia.

This was a valid question at the start of the year, and possibly one with an answer we liked at halftime of the Georgia game. Three turnovers made it swing hard the other way, but Tennessee’s inability to move the ball at all would’ve left us with the same answer either way. Closer, maybe, but not ready to win without courting weirdness and perfection. Against Alabama, same answer, only more obvious.

And part of not being ready to measure ourselves against those two is also being the sort of team that can in no way turn it over on three consecutive possessions and have two of them ran back for touchdowns against anybody. Do that against Arkansas and maybe even Vanderbilt, and we’ll get blown by again same as Kentucky did.

But it’s also true, here in year three, that we shouldn’t be measuring progress primarily by what we do against the SEC East’s second tier either. That measurement was very important last year, and the Vols passed the test. Not with enough flying colors to make them bulletproof against that group, as we’ve seen. But whatever has become of our history and our culture, none of us will get where we want to go if we only value what happens against Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt.

You can’t make it only about beating the second tier in year three here. And we’re clearly not ready to make it about beating Alabama or Georgia.

That leaves us with the space between: isn’t the best way to measure progress this year by what the Vols do against teams like Texas A&M, Auburn, and Florida? Wasn’t that true at the beginning of the year, only skewed by the schedule that gave us Georgia and Alabama first?

If so, good news: here come those games.

Tennessee’s schedule has, for as long as I’ve been alive, been light on November. It’s what happens when you traditionally play Kentucky and Vanderbilt to close the year, had Ole Miss in there before divisional play, then added South Carolina on Halloween weekend and Missouri in early November after that. Since divisional play began in 1992, the Vols have played only 16 ranked teams in November/December in the regular season. That’s 16 in 29 seasons. Six of those are non-conference foes from 2005 and earlier; Tennessee doesn’t schedule a marquee non-conference opponent in November anymore. And the Vols haven’t faced a Top 10 opponent in November since 2013.

Playing a ranked opponent in November/December is something that happens basically every other year on average, when the Vols have caught Kentucky or Missouri in an up cycle, or a late-season SEC West rotating opponent like LSU in 2017 or Auburn in 2013. It’s aggressively normal for the fate of our season to be decided by what happens in September and October, and if the fates are unkind, we talk about playing youth and getting ready for next year.

But not this time, at all.

Now, the Vols will get Arkansas (receiving votes), #8 Texas A&M, Auburn (receiving votes), Vanderbilt, and #10 Florida. Not only will these be the most meaningful opportunities of the season, they’ll be the most meaningful outcomes for the future.

In year one, Jeremy Pruitt’s Vols gave themselves a chance to do something memorable when they beat #12 Kentucky, then got blown out by Missouri and Vanderbilt. In year two, Jeremy Pruitt’s Vols dug themselves quite the ditch in the first half of the year, then created their own meaning in a six-turned-eight-game winning streak. Those wins were incredibly meaningful. But the bar here is still higher than the teams Tennessee beat in that run last year.

The bar isn’t Alabama and Georgia, not yet. But if you want to clear that one, we need better players. Best way to get better players is to win games. In 2020, I don’t think anyone should be on the hot seat; these aren’t, “Should he be fired?” games. But they might control the speed of Tennessee’s progress in the future. How fast we can start measuring ourselves against the Tide and Dawgs will depend on how quickly we can get more of those players.

The Vols should play youth if it helps them win now, not next year. Because right now, plenty of real live progress is left on the the table for this team, and plenty of more winnable games that could still make for some of the better memories we’ve had around here in a long time. Can they take care of business against Arkansas in a game that’s suddenly so much more dangerous? Then what can they do in search of their first Top 10 win since 2006 when that Top 10 opponent isn’t Georgia or Alabama, as the Dawgs and Tide represent nine of the last ten Top 10 opponents we’ve faced?

Can they give themselves a chance to get Florida at the end of the year?

You’re going to get some answers in the second half of this year, and they will be more meaningful than the answers we’ve heard already. I don’t know if we’ll like them or not. But it makes a lot more sense to judge these Vols by what they do against A&M, Auburn, and Florida than what they did against Alabama and Georgia.

I think these next five will be the most meaningful set of games for Jeremy Pruitt yet. It’s valuable for the future. But it’s also still incredibly valuable for the present. Progress, meaning, and memories are still out there for this team to have. And if they get them, the Vols will give themselves a better chance to make memories against the Tide next time.

Credit Pruitt for the winning streak last year. Credit Bama for being Bama. Progress for the Vols is somewhere between.

And it’s still out there in the present, not the future.