Tennessee quarterback Keller Chryst passes under pressure from Missouri defensive lineman Tre Williams (95) on Saturday at Neyland Stadium.
Mark WiedmerKNOXVILLE – This couldn’t have been Derek Dooley’s revenge, could it?
Exactly six years after Dooley lost to Vanderbilt in what wound up being his final game as Tennessee’s football coach, the offense he now oversees at Missouri destroyed the Volunteers 50-17 inside Neyland Stadium on Saturday.
Of course, that was also the same score as last year’s loss at Mizzou, which led to Tennessee firing Butch Jones as coach. A single quote from Vols center Ryan Johnson made it sound as if Butch Ball has not completely escaped the psyche of the Vols players, which might somewhat explain how you can dominate a 12th-ranked Kentucky squad one week – as Tennessee did in a 24-7 dismantling of the Wildcats a week earlier – then fall apart so completely against an unranked Tigers team.
“Snap and clear is something you have to live by as an offense,” Johnson said in a direct reference to one of Coach Cliché’s most repeated building bricks for success.
But did this loss snap and clear any realistic dreams of a bowl game for Tennessee? Now 5-6 for the season and down to their last guaranteed game, can the Vols snap and clear the Mizzou debacle from their brains over the next few days well enough to snap Vanderbilt’s two-game winning streak against them when the two play in Nashville on Saturday?