Tennessee and mystery: the 2015 season, unexplained

The Tennessee Volunteers are not going to play for a division or conference title in 2015. They won’t play in a high-end bowl game. Their remaining schedule, in fact, guarantees decreased publicity and diminished centrality as far as the national press corps is concerned. The sexiest television attractions on the slate have come and gone, following Saturday’s loss to Alabama on CBS.

Why talk about this team, then? Surely, there are far more central and important stories to address near the end of October.

Well, that’s the point: It’s a counterintuitive truth, but the Vols ARE a rather central case study in terms of trying to understand the 2015 season and the quality of various teams.

The key words in that sentence: TRYING TO.

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The complexities presented by Tennessee’s 2015 journey are extremely hard to wrap the mind around. Sure, Butch Jones is (currently; perhaps he could change next season) a deficient gameday coach. Naturally, Tennessee lacks extra dimensions on offense which could carry it over the (Rocky) Top. However, beyond those evident truths, the Vols’ larger path this season defies easy description. Understanding this opens the door to further analysis, but when engaging in said analysis, the first and last response is fundamentally defined by stupefied amazement.

Perhaps the most baffling element of Tennessee’s season — when viewed from a greater height and distance — is that the Vols have played a pair of mirror-image games and pairs of inverted games. This seems like a somewhat cryptic reference, but it’s not.

The pair of mirror-image games: Oklahoma and Georgia, both in Neyland Stadium. Against Oklahoma, Tennessee surged to the big lead and then gave it away in the fourth quarter. Against Georgia, Tennessee was trampled in the first 25 minutes and could barely stand, leaning against the ropes. The Vols’ opponent made key mistakes to let them back in the hunt, and Tennessee used a big second-half surge to win on a day when its offense was dormat for nearly the entire first half.

The inverted games: Arkansas and Alabama, both against the SEC West in the Vols’ eight-game league schedule, which allows for only two non-division contests.

Against Arkansas, Tennessee allowed a bunch of points in the second quarter and went scoreless in the fourth, missing a short field goal along the way. Against Alabama, Tennessee allowed no points in the second quarter and scored a clutch touchdown in the fourth, missing multiple long field goals en route to another gut-punch defeat.

It just doesn’t matter what the Vols do this year; it usually comes up short. Against Bama, the offense showed the late-game resilience which was missing against the Hogs. Against Arkansas, Tennessee didn’t allow a single fourth-quarter point. The Vols are the classic case of the team that’s always “just good enough to lose.” They do plenty of good things over 60 minutes, but a combination of their own failures and an opponent’s modest but better-timed successes creates a loss.

Who are the Vols? They’re “the best four-loss team in the country,” or “an impressive non-winning team,” and other oxymorons you can think of. They inspire all the twisted-pretzel labels and cliches frustrated fans lean on when trying to use positive spin to describe a failed season.

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Beyond the labels and the game patterns, Tennessee has simply met various opponents at different points in their respective evolutions. Oklahoma was physically fresh but unsure of itself. Florida was untested and trying to establish itself at a lot of positions, chiefly at quarterback with Will Grier, who came of age against the Vols — just their luck, right?

Georgia was reeling from the Alabama beatdown but intent on winning a game it sorely needed. The Dawgs played with urgency but great sloppiness in Neyland Stadium. Arkansas was coming off a miserable loss, but that was an overtime squeaker and not the massive thrashing Georgia endured. Alabama was a confident team entering its meeting with Tennessee, but the Crimson Tide had not played with much precision on offense in previous weeks. The portraits of the high-profile teams the Vols have played are not all that settled or certain at this point.

Alabama could be a playoff team, or it could lose to LSU and be the third-place team in the SEC West. Oklahoma could either soar or crash in November, and we don’t really know what to expect. Florida’s identity will be dramatically reshaped based on how it performs against Georgia and Florida State.

Georgia and Arkansas seem comparatively easy to assess: The Dawgs and Hogs are mediocre teams with some talent, especially in the running game, but nothing which would place either squad in the top 15. That Tennessee started horribly against one and brightly against the other only underscores the sense of mystery which envelops this team… and the brand-name opponents which have faced it.

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The more you study Tennessee this year, the more you’re stumped beyond the obvious points about Butch Jones’s coaching chops, the team’s kicking-game woes, and Mike DeBord’s offense.

How to evaluate the SEC West through the prisms of Alabama and Arkansas?

How to evaluate the Big 12 through the lens of Oklahoma?

How do Florida and Alabama match up in a possible SEC title game?

Don’t be so certain that comparisons routed through Knoxville will give you more clarity — they might just confuse the issue, based on how the 2015 season has unfolded on Rocky Top.

About Matt Zemek

Editor, @TrojansWire | CFB writer since 2001 |

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