KNOXVILLE – Throughout his tenure as Tennessee’s football coach, Butch Jones has tried to instill the same winning formula for the Volunteers to follow.
The plan for success centered on limiting turnovers, minimizing penalties and relying on strong special-teams play, and it’s mostly worked, especially as the roster was upgraded through excellent recruiting.
Tennessee’s Nigel Warrior (18) and Ohio’s Papi White (4) go after a fumbled Ohio punt return. White recovered the ball in Saturday’s game at Neyland Stadium, and Tennessee has been even more fortunate on its fumbles this year, having lost only one of 11.Those tenets were mostly absent during the first three games of the season, and Tennessee is 3-0 largely because of its talent level and the quality of the competition.
For the Vols to have any chance Saturday against Florida or in three other tough SEC games to follow, though, they must get back to playing the kind of football that helped them succeed in the past.
“That’s the mindset of the team,” tight end Jason Croom said Monday. “We’re never satisfied. We know we need to fix things, and we continue to fix those same things.
“It’s preached from coaches and players. We’re not satisfied. We know we need to continue to get better as a team.”
Jones lamented the lack of discipline and consistency his team showed in closer-than-expected wins against Appalachian State and Ohio and a misleading 21-point triumph against Virginia Tech. The Vols showed glimpses of the team they’re supposed to be in each of those games, but too often they made costly mistakes or failed to show the preparation level they’ve exhibited in the past.
“When you go back and you review the video, you see a lot of good things, and when all 11 individuals work together, we’re a pretty good football team, a pretty explosive football team in all three phases,” Jones said. “But we’ve had way too many individual breakdowns – whether it be an assignment, whether it be a fundamental, whether it be a technique – that really hinders the execution of a particular play.”
The numbers from the first three games in terms of turnovers and penalties show the contrast between these Vols and their recent versions.
Under Jones Tennessee has been one of the SEC’s least-penalized teams, ranking 17th, sixth and 21st nationally in penalty yards per game.
In the previous three seasons the Vols were penalized 5.1 (2015), 4.2 (2014) and 4.6 (2013) times per game for 40.8, 34.2 and 37.5 yards per game, but in three games this year Tennessee was flagged 21 times for 209 yards – the 94 yards against Ohio were high for a game under Jones – for an average of seven penalties for 70 yards.
“I think I’ve watched all three contests probably 15 times in the last 24 hours,” Jones said, “trying to put your finger on it.”
Tennessee, which turned the ball over only 12 times last season, has fumbled 11 times but lost only one in three games. That’s tied with Central Florida for the second-most in the country behind only Penn State. In the three previous seasons Tennessee fumbled 20, 18 and 14 times.
“It’s just being sloppy with the football,” Jones said. “We’ve got to value the football. You can turn your head and say, ‘Well, you haven’t lost very many fumbles,’ but I don’t ever believe in doing that. I think you have to look at the problem. You’ve got to hit the problem head on.
“We’re going to talk and we’re going to do a full ball-security circuit today (in practice) both offensively and defensively. We’re going to get back to valuing the football. Here’s the encouraging thing: It’s all the same individuals. The individuals who have had their hands on the ball, they’ve been carrying the football for Tennessee now for a couple of years.
“Same thing with the penalties. Why are they occurring? We’ll make a point of emphasis about it. Our players do a great job with that, and they’ll come and they want to get better at it, too. We’re going to work very hard it. We’ll get it corrected.”
Many of Tennessee’s penalties have been on special teams in the return game, and the typically stingy coverage units gave up big returns against the Mountaineers and Hokies.
If the Vols can’t stop making the mistakes that plagued their first three performances, they won’t be able to rely on their talent to save them against Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M and Alabama these next four weeks.
Tennessee’s path to success is no different than it’s been.
“That has won us a lot of football games but when we don’t follow that formula, it puts in conflict,” Jones said. “We have to start doing the little things (right). It starts with us as coaches and it starts with our players. We’re a veteran team. They understand and have followed that formula in the past. We’ll get it right.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.