To say the 2025 season to date has been a journey for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football program would be an understatement.
The Mocs have been beaten — plenty. They’ve been injured — a lot. They’ve been forced to adapt — often.
Seventh-year head coach Rusty Wright and his staff have taken chances on people nobody else was willing to take chances on, a matter of necessity for a program forced into rapid transition since a 2024 season that ended with UTC just short of what would have been a second straight appearance in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Every playmaker, every difference maker, basically every contributor to the successes of UTC teams of the recent past is gone. So there were lumps to be taken early on, especially against a nonconference schedule that included two FCS teams currently ranked among the top 10 nationally, as well as Football Bowl Subdivision member Memphis, which was No. 25 in this week’s Associated Press poll and undefeated before being upset Saturday by the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Through it all, Wright has remained consistent that he believes in this group, and that belief was rewarded in the Mocs’ improbable 42-38 win over Southern Conference rival East Tennessee State University on Saturday afternoon at Finley Stadium, where UTC trailed 38-21 with 10:17 to play.
UTC vs. ETSU football on Oct. 18, 2025
The comeback win keeps the Mocs (3-4, 2-1) in conference championship contention, and every previously embattled unit stepped up to make it happen.
The passing game, which was ranked at the bottom of the SoCon in a number of categories, got 343 yards and four scores from quarterback Camden Orth, with 184 of those yards coming in the fourth quarter alone for the graduate transfer from Bowling Green who didn’t play last season.
There was Jamarii Robinson — who had his own journey during the 2024-25 school year at Northern Colorado, missing the season so he could graduate and be eligible this season — hauling in two touchdown passes in the final 2:29.
There was the defense coming up with a big play, stopping the Buccaneers (3-5, 1-3) on fourth-and-1 with 1:55 remaining when Orlando Daniels stuffed Jason Albritton for a 1-yard loss that gave the Mocs the ball back with 67 yards to go and just one timeout in their pocket.
Orth was 6-for-8 passing for 40 yards on the winning drive while also rushing for 22 yards, capping it with a 4-yard touchdown to Robinson.
“We’ve got a bunch of kids nobody wanted,” said Wright, who improved to 6-0 against ETSU, which is in its first season under head coach Will Healy, a Chattanooga native and former Boyd Buchanan standout who was a UTC assistant from 2009-15. “I’ve got a bunch of transfers nobody wanted except for us, and I’ve got a bunch of young kids battling with them, and we’re a rag-tag bunch, a coat of many colors, and just trying to piece it together and fight our tails off to go win.
“Even early in the year when it was bad, guys were getting better, and even if we’d lost this thing, we got better today. I know it would’ve been hard to swallow, but we got better as a football team. But we’re just a bunch of misfits that nobody wants, and that’s us. We’ve just got to keep battling.”
The Mocs threw everything at ETSU, including an 8-yard touchdown run by kicker Jude Kelley on a fake field-goal attempt in the third quarter that put the Mocs up 21-10 before the Bucs scored 28 straight points over the next 14-plus minutes of game clock.
UTC started the comeback with Orth’s 22-yard touchdown pass to Josh Williams at the 7:20 mark of the fourth quarter, then drew within a field goal on Robinson’s 20-yard touchdown catch at 2:29. Kelley followed by executing what seemed to a perfect onside kick with the Mocs down 38-35, but a replay review ruled freshman tight end Landon Strickland’s heel landed out of bounds before he came down with the ball.
“I have never in my life thought that would ever happen,” Kelley said of his touchdown, noting the coaching staff had just put the play in earlier in the week. “Today was a great feeling coming out on top, but I think it’s a big learning experience for everybody. This could have so easily gone either way, but I think it shows a lot to our team’s character and what the coaches have been driving in us each and every week, because we’ve already gone through some tough times as a team, so hopefully we can use this to kind of push us on.”
In their blitz of four consecutive touchdowns, the Bucs made use of a ground game that piled up 321 yards to break free for scores. Still, the Mocs never crumbled — at least not completely — despite some fiery sideline exchanges that quickly turned to elation as the offense started clicking and the defense limited the Bucs to a total of 33 yards on their final three drives.
“I’m grateful to be here,” Robinson said. “I’m grateful to get an opportunity from the coaches here and just be able to play with these type of guys. It is hard to find people like this who don’t quit actually and just keep pressing you to get better, keep pushing you to get better, and I like that. That’s what these boys do: They just keep feeding me good energy. It’s only right that I just go out there and play my hardest for them.”
Markell Quick led the UTC receivers with 125 yards on six catches, including a 21-yard touchdown in the second quarter Justus Durant rushed for 95 yards on 21 carries and fellow running back Ryan Ingram had a 23-yard touchdown in the first quarter, and Amanuel Dickson finished with a team-high 10 tackles, including two for loss.
The Mocs, who returned from their lone open date of the regular season and posted back-to-back victories for the first time since winning five in a row across September-October 2024, will visit Samford (1-6, 1-4) next weekend before hosting Furman on Nov. 1.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.