Tennessee 24, Alabama 17: Advanced Box Score
You can't spell "a little turtle dovin'" without UT
Just like after the Florida game, there are going to be some ugly numbers here. Don’t care. Tennessee beat Alabama for the second time in two years, just the second time since 2007, and and have now beaten Florida and Alabama in the same year for only the fifth time in my lifetime. You couldn’t come up with a stat line that would make me feel bad about that.
And honestly, the stats aren’t that bad. They’re better for the Vols than for Alabama for sure. They reflect the fact that the defense played better than the offense, but you knew that already.
Five Factor Box Score

In week 8, only Indiana (11) created more scoring opportunities than Tennessee (10) did. That’s good. However, UT only scored 24 points with those 10 opportunities (2.4 points per scoring opp). That’s bad. The Vols held Alabama to just a 36% success rate. That’s good. But Tennessee only had a 36% success rate themselves. That’s bad. Despite Tennessee turning the ball over three times, Alabama had just a 13.7% havoc rate. That’s good. But Tennessee had their lowest individual game havoc rate of the season at just 16.9%.
That’s bad. I would point out, however, that QB hurries don’t count as a havoc stat, and Tennessee’s defense hurried Jalen Milroe 12 times Saturday, which certainly affected many of his throws and decisions. So while the havoc number could’ve been better, it also doesn’t capture everything Tennessee did to disrupt Alabama’s offense.
Rushing Report
Tennessee held the Tide to just 75 yards rushing, the lowest total in the series since limiting Bama to 67 yards on the ground in 2005 (a miserable 3-6 loss in Tuscaloosa) and 44 yards rushing in 2000 (a 20-10 win). The important number in the chart above though is zero open field yards—that means Alabama didn’t have any runs of more than 10 yards. You can thank Will Brooks for the shoestring tackle of Milroe in the 1st quarter on the off-tackle QB sneak that almost went for a score for keeping that number intact.
Player Usage & PPA
Oh yeah baby, the defense is back to holding the opposing QB to negative PPA, and I’m here for it (the 3.8 1st quarter PPA is supposed to be negative, it’s coded wrong on the chart). The pick thrown to Jermod McCoy from the UT 3 yard line accounts for most of Milroe’s negative PPA in the 1st, and a bunch of short passes that didn’t go anywhere plus the game-sealing INT by Will Brooks puts Milroe in the red for quarter 4.
Of course PPA doesn’t tell the whole story. Dylan Sampson ended the game with a negative total PPA, but we all know Tennessee would not have won on Saturday without D-Samp. So why did his number end up in the red? Well there was the fumble on Tennessee’s first possession. Remember that PPA assigns value to field position and a player’s contribution to improving the team’s field position (and thus their potential to score). Sampson’s fumble deep in Alabama territory makes him take a hit, as does having several short runs in the 4th quarter—runs that didn’t improve UT’s potential to score much, but did help the Vols melt precious time off the clock.