New Tennessee football defensive coordinator Bob Shoop answers questions during a news conference Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016, in Knoxville, Tenn. (Amy Smotherman Burgess/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP)KNOXVILLE – One comment from Bob Shoop’s introduction last week stood out among the rest.
“We want to play our best,” Tennessee’s new defensive coordinator said, “when the game is on the line.”
The remark is a little heavy-handed in light of what happened to the Volunteers in 2015.
Defensively Tennessee was far from its best when the game was on the line against Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. In each of those eventual defeats the Vols could not hold onto fourth-quarter leads. Those games overshadowed the two times Tennessee made clutch plays to preserve leads against Georgia and South Carolina.
The offense’s inability to pick up key first downs late in those losses didn’t help, but the late-game struggles are hard to ignore in evaluating Tennessee’s defense, which Shoop is hoping to improve after being hired from Penn State.