Tennessee's Emmanuel Moseley wraps up Florida's Jeff Driskel. UT's defense played solid throughout the game.KNOXVILLE - No player on the Tennessee football team bleeds orange more than freshman safety Todd Kelly Jr., whose father will be honored as a Vols "legend" at the SEC Championship Game weekend in Atlanta on the first weekend of December.
So when a reporter asked Kelly late Saturday afternoon if the UT defense had done enough to win in its bitter 10-9 loss to Florida, Kelly swiftly replied, "We didn't win the game, so obviously not."
Yet any time you hold an SEC opponent to 232 total offensive yards and one touchdown, you also don't necessarily deserve to lose. Just ask UT head coach Butch Jones, who falls to 2-8 against SEC foes 17 games into his Tennessee tenure.
"Defensively, I thought we played well enough to win the football game," Jones said. "But at the end of the day, you've got to score touchdowns in the red zone and you can't turn the football over. That's pretty much the storyline. Again, learning how to win, close games out."
His points were all valid. The offense gained exactly one more yard than the Gators. It coughed up the same number of turnovers -- three. But despite the defense giving the Vols offense the football on the Florida 13 to open the second half following a Jalen Reeves-Maybin interception, UT turned it right back over when Vols quarterback Justin Worley threw an interception.
Then Worley fumbled the ball to Florida on the next-to-last play of the third quarter at the UT 30 with the Vols up 9-0. The Gators turned that turnover into their only touchdown of the afternoon, then kicked a 49-yard field goal with 3:38 to go to win it.
"At the end of the day, I've said we have to control the controllables and the things we can control and we didn't do that," Jones said. "We turned the football over. We had to kick field goals in the red zone. You can't do that."
His statements are especially true against SEC teams when you're rebuilding a once-proud program left in disarray by having four different head coaches in seven seasons. But that doesn't mean the defense wasn't good and getting better.
"Throughout the course of the game I believe that we did (play well enough to win)," said sophomore defensive back Cam Sutton, who had an interception, one tackle for a loss and three pass breakups. "It was our job to continue to get off the field and get the ball to our offense. I feel like we did our thing for the most part. We just got to learn how to finish our games."
Added freshman defensive lineman Derek Barnett, who had five solo tackles, two tackles for a loss and one sack: "We played good. I wouldn't say well enough to win. We had some mistakes. Like the fourth quarter, we didn't play our best fourth quarter, but we played good."
They did tire in that fourth quarter, but who wouldn't when your offense is struggling as bad as the Vols did Saturday.
But they also made an impression on winning coach Will Muschamp, who praised the UT defense that held his Gators to seven third-down conversions in 20 attempts, "as a very good third-down defense."
What it means going forward probably won't be known until at least a week after this weekend's game against the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A visit to Ole Miss awaits the week after that. A visit from Alabama the week after that.
Sutton, for one, is excited going forward.
"We still have little things we need to correct leading into next week," he said. "Just come in (Sunday) to take care of our bodies, get in the film room and learn from our mistakes so it won't happen the rest of the year and we can progress as a team."
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.