Tennessee Football: Five takeaways from Vols’ 30-13 win vs. Austin Peay

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By far the ugliest game Tennessee Football has played in recent history against an FCS school still ended in a 30-13 victory for the Vols. What made it so unbearable to watch, though? We break that down here. These are the five things we learned from UT’s extremely concerning win over an in-state foe.

5. Austin Peay pulled out all the stops

It’s as if Scotty Walden was auditioning for a bigger coaching job. He called two receiver passes, one on the first drive, dialed up multiple surprises blitzes, had the perfect game plan on the first drive and went for it on fourth down three times. Oh, and he called two timeouts in the third quarter just to slow the Vols’ tempo. This worked to a degree, but Austin Peay wasted a lot of what they could do the rest of the year.

4. Everything went wrong in the passing game

Yes, Joe Milton III had some overthrows. However, there were at least seven drops by four different receivers in the game. Two passing plays broke down due to misreads in blocks. Then there was the Ramel Keyton fumble. UT turned heavily to screens to fix the issue, but there were multiple penalties that killed two drives when that happened.

3. Far too many penalties in general

We mentioned all the penalties in the passing game. Well, the Vols had too many penalties in general. They were flagged 10 times for 88 yards on the day. Those weren’t all offensive pass interference and holding penalties. Defensive pass interferences and false starts were part of that as well, and that’s something they have to fix.

2. Run game was dominant

To be fair, the Vols should be dominant here given how much of a mismatch they have on the line of scrimmage. However, at least they took advantage of it. UT rushed for over 220 yards. Jabari Small and Jaylen Wright were dominant, rushing for 89 and 118 yards respectively. Meanwhile, Milton did rush for a touchdown.

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1. Pass defense was awful late

Once the fourth quarter arrived, Tennessee Football started to look like its 2022 self in the secondary. The Vols gave up a touchdown through the air in the fourth and then allowed APSU to drive deep into their own territory late in the game. Aaron Beasley was the star of the unit at linebacker, Kamal Hadden had a pick and Wesley Walker made plays, but there were far too many issues.

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One Response

  1. Tennessee should be dropped to around #15th I think Bama should still be ranked higher then TN. Austin Peay is a zero win team. And they pretty much spanked TN. if not for a few lucky plays and some bad calls from refs for TN. Austin would have won by 28 or better

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