First, I don’t want any of what’s below to be mistaken for celebrating a “moral victory”. Tennessee absolutely had a chance to win a game against the #1 team in America and gave it away, mainly due to a freshman QB and a veteran OL that couldn’t get it done. The freshman has somewhat of an excuse, having never been in a spot like that before (and from all indications, was at least somewhat injured). The OL has no excuse. Tennessee is playing the same guys that played last year in games against really good defenses like Georgia, Alabama, and Oklahoma. And you might say “yeah they lost those games too”, but they didn’t get absolutely bullied like they did against Texas. Something has to change up front, whether it’s personnel, scheme, or coaching; there’s eight more SEC games ahead of the Vols, and what they did on Saturday cannot be repeated.
However, two things can be true at once, and the other true thing is that Tennessee played a lot of good football against Texas. The defense was heroic. Special teams were solid, as Qua Moss out-performed Texas All-American return man Ryan Niblett, and that onside kick was a doozy. (My assumption is that kick style will be outlawed in the offseason, if not sooner.)
The truth is that Tennessee had a throw into the endzone with time running out that would’ve won them the game. Had the offense played better, that throw might not have been needed. There’s a lot of reasons to be hopeful for the remaining slate of games. If the defense keep performing at this level and the offense can get itself right, this can still be a really good football team.
Five Factor Box Score
I pull these number from collegefootballdata.com, and I think there’s something wrong with how they figured the number of scoring opportunities for Texas, which would also throw off the Longhorns’ points per opportunity. So while I don’t think the numbers are in reality quite as extreme as they look here, the point is that Tennessee did a very good job of keeping Texas out of the endzone. The Tennessee havoc rate continued to be high as well, and surprisingly technically higher than Texas’ despite having fewer sacks than the Longhorns.
Rushing Report
The lack of run game did not help keep pressure off of Faizon Brandon at all, although when you look at the stats, Tennessee still out-rushed Texas 70 yards to 61. And that’s accounting for Brandon’s -73 yards from sacks. And the freshman QB still had positive yardage on the day (even though it was just 2 yards) even with all the sacks.
Player Usage/PPA
I’ve looked at usage and predicted points added numbers after just about every game for the past four seasons or so, and what is possibly the biggest correlation between whether a team won or lost is whose QB had the better PPA numbers. It seems as if every time a QB has a total PPA number that is negative, that team certainly lost. No different this time.
And while Arch’s 3.4 PPA isn’t a world-beating number, it was enough to get his team across the finish line Saturday.