Tennessee 33, Mississippi State 14: Advanced Box Score

It's always Dog-est before the Dawgs

Five Factor Review

Unfortunately the top of this chart is looking the same every week—lots of scoring opportunities, not a lot of points. The Tennessee offense did look better this week, and scored more points than they have in any SEC game this season. But another fumble in the red zone and a 4th-down conversion stonewalled at the goal line kept the total much lower than it could’ve, should’ve been. The high success rate for the second straight week is encouraging; still want to see that explosiveness number tick up.

Defensively UT did get gashed on a couple of long runs where it looked like the defensive front was misaligned. But the Vols kept the Bulldogs’ success rate low while keeping their own havoc rate high. Overall a solid defensive effort once again.

Rushing Report

Here you can see that both teams did well in the run game. A 4th-down failure at the goal line kept Tennessee’s power success rate from being 100%. There were some holes in the run game for UT that I think were created due to the Vols aggressively trying to get at State’s young QB to rattle him. Some of those gambles left the Tennessee defense with unsound run fits from time to time, and MSU was able to take advantage and peel off a few long runs.

Player Usage & PPA

Another week, another opposing QB held to negative PPA.

If I told you Friday that Gaston Moore would be 13% of Tennessee’s offense the next day, you’d probably think we blew the doors off MSU’s defense. The more apt thought would be “uh oh.” It’s wait-and-see mode for Saturday.

With Moore in, the Vols were run-heavy in the 2nd half, thus the preponderance of RBs on the usage chart. Dylan Sampson’s fumble and Peyton Lewis getting stuffed at the goal line led to their negative PPAs in the first quarter. I think both played a better game than what is reflected here and shows how PPA isn’t always a great individual stat.