KNOXVILLE – The graphic is sure to pop up during ESPN’s broadcast on Saturday night.
The team with the most rushing yards has won the last seven meetings between Tennessee and Florida, and perhaps no other stat demonstrates the Gators’ seven-year dominance in the annual mid-September rivalry.
For this Volunteers’ offense, though, it’s more about quality than quantity in the ground game, and Tennessee’s main goal is efficiency.
“I don’t know if we have to outrush them or they need to outrush us to have victory,” Vols offensive coordinator Jim Chaney said after Wednesday morning’s practice. “When I hand it off and you’re in the stands, you go, ‘That looked OK.’ That’s pretty much what efficient running means.
“When you hand it off and it doesn’t look good, that’s not efficient. Ultimately, to try to objectively say you need to have this and need to have that, we don’t do a lot of that. We just say, ‘Yeah, we’re running it OK,’ or ‘No, we’re not.'”