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Wiedmer: Perfect or not, UT win a good start Vols running backs duo could be crazy good Vols’ secondary sees aspects to improve UT Vols beat Bowling Green, 59-30
NASHVILLE – Tennessee’s secondary went into Saturday’s season opener against a pass-first offense without two injured starters and its position coach.
The absences quickly became evident for the Volunteers.
Bowling Green exposed Tennessee’s secondary in piling up double-digit chunk plays, many of them deep passes against man-to-man coverage, to the tune of 433 passing yards in the Vols’ 59-30 win in Nashville on Saturday.
“It’s stuff we can solve,” senior safety Brian Randolph said. “They’re also a very talented offense. We know we were challenged today, but it was a lot of stuff that we did to kill ourselves.
“It wasn’t all doom and gloom. A couple of explosive plays here and there. Well, actually quite a few, but we also had some good pass break-ups. We didn’t get the picks like we wanted to, but we had a lot of contested passes.”
Malik Foreman and Evan Berry made the first defensive starts of their careers, and Bowling Green often picked on Foreman, freshman nickel cornerback Micah Abernathy and cornerback Emmanuel Moseley.
Roger Lewis hauled in a 45-yard pass on the third play of the game, and it was a sign of what was to come.
The Falcons hit on seven pass plays of at least 25 yards.
“I don’t think it’ll be a big concern at all,” cornerback Cameron Sutton said. “A lot of those little things are winning at the line, having good technique, wedging the receivers and things like that. That’s something you can always work on and get better at. We’ve just got to continue to keep doing that and get better moving forward.”
The Vols will continue to be without Rashaan Gaulden and LaDarrell McNeil, but it will get secondary coach Willie Martinez back today after he served a one-game suspension for a secondary recruiting violation from last spring.
“It has an impact from a communication standpoint,” Vols coach Butch Jones said. “Coach Martinez brings so much from the box, and not having him available, I thought that hurt us. I’m not going to sit up here and tell you it didn’t, because I think it did. But our players were resilient.”
The Vols often used a package with six defensive backs to counter Bowling Green’s four- and five-receiver sets. On most of its long pass plays, Bowling Green quarterback Matt Johnson simply threw deep to a receiver on a go route in single coverage against a Tennessee defensive back not named Sutton.
Moseley was beaten twice on back-to-back plays in the second quarter, Foreman missed some open-field tackles and Abernathy had some nervy moments in his debut.
“It happens,” Sutton said. “It’s part of being a cornerback. You just forget about those plays, snap and clear and move on to the next play.”
Tennessee seemed to settle in defensively when Todd Kelly Jr. entered the lineup late in the second quarter.
The sophomore spent most of the week in the hospital with an infection stemming from having his tonsils removed two weeks before the season started.
Kelly was in the hospital, where Jones joked the safety “broke the record for video watched in a hospital room,” as late as Thursday afternoon, but he played on Saturday.
“Strong kid,” Sutton said. “Battling through something like that, a lot of people probably wouldn’t be able to play. That just shows the dedication and the hard work and the things that he does and the love that he has for this game. We were excited to have him out there.”
Jones deflected some of the blame for Saturday’s performance from the secondary by saying the lack of a pass rush and the coverage of the linebackers also attributed to the issues.
Tennessee gave up more than 200 yards passing in just five games in 2014, but the Vols’ efforts of limiting how many big plays they give up this season didn’t get off to a good start.
“It’s hard for everybody that’s a competitor,” Randolph said. “You make 10 good plays and you make one bad play, and that’s the play you think about is the bad one. It’s football. You’re going to get beat sometimes and other teams are going to make plays. We’re just going to come back, correct what we need to correct and get better this week.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com