The Tennessee Volunteers are 13-0 under second-year football coach Josh Heupel when leading at halftime.
Decent stat, right? It's also a stat with a lot more bite to it.
Building four- or five-touchdown leads at half against Tennessee Tech, Missouri, South Carolina, South Alabama, Ball State and Akron before cruising to victory is hardly a cause for parades, but leading Alabama 28-20 at the break only to trail 49-42 with less than five minutes to play is a different animal entirely.
Especially when a botched exchange between quarterback Hendon Hooker and running back Jabari Small resulted in a gift-wrapped, 11-yard touchdown return by Alabama linebacker Dallas Turner to put the Crimson Tide on the doorstep of a 16th straight series victory.
"I think our program, our players and our coaches are calm, and we talk about 60 minutes no matter what it's like at the beginning, middle or end," Heupel said after Saturday's dramatic 52-49 triumph. "In the late third and in the middle of the fourth, it didn't look good, but our guys just continued to reset. The greatest thing I can say is that when they're coming off the field after something doesn't go right, they've already reset.
"It was true for the offense after the fumble. Defensively, we would give up a score, but they were ready to go compete the next time. That speaks to the culture in our program, and it speaks to our coaching staff. It speaks to the leadership, and Hendon is a big part of that, too."
If last season was about the flare of Tennessee's up-tempo offense, this year's Vols are equal parts flare and fight. Games against Pittsburgh, Florida and Alabama have all come down to the final snap, with Tennessee making the late offensive plays or defensive stops to prevail.
Only Georgia and Ohio State rank ahead of Tennessee in the latest Associated Press poll — try picturing that sentence some 20 months ago when Jeremy Pruitt was terminated amid university and NCAA investigations — giving the Vols even more outside noise to navigate in the weeks ahead.
Yet there is this undeniable resiliency that has accompanied the dazzle, which was also reflected Saturday by the Vols pounding out 68 more rushing yards than Alabama and tallying twice as many tackles for loss. Throw in the previous 40-13 win at LSU, and Tennessee has rushed for 445 yards the past two games while allowing one sack.
"We're just in the beginning stages of this thing," Heupel said. "I can't imagine a more exciting time to be a part of something as we continue to grow this program."
Remember the horror movie, "The Ring," when watching a bizarre videotape caused death a week later?
That's essentially what happens to Auburn coaching careers for those who lose to Ole Miss in Oxford. The Tigers lost to the Rebels inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium for only the fourth time Saturday, providing yet more nails in the Brian Harsin era coffin and its ghastly 9-11 record.
In 1992, Pat Dye's Tigers opened with a loss at Ole Miss, and Dye was forced to resign at the end of that season. Tommy Tuberville's Tigers lost there in 2008, and he chose to resign that December, and then there were Gene Chizik's 2012 Tigers who lost in Oxford several weeks before he was fired.
Alabama senior linebacker Henry To'oTo'o, who spent his first two seasons at Tennessee, on whether Saturday's loss hurt more than others: "We'll see them again. We'll see them again."
Georgia heads into its open date coming off a 55-0 win over Vanderbilt, which last hung a touchdown on the Bulldogs via Josh Crawford's 2-yard run with two seconds left in a 41-13 loss in Athens in 2018. The Bulldogs held the Commodores to a pair of field goals in their 30-6 win in Nashville to open the 2019 season, with the 2020 matchup scratched due to Vandy's coronavirus-related issues and with Georgia winning 62-0 last year.
After its open date, Georgia will face its two chief Eastern Division rivals — Florida and Tennessee — on consecutive Saturdays for the first time since 1973, when the Bulldogs won 35-31 in Knoxville before losing 11-10 in Jacksonville. Of course, that was nearly two decades before the Southeastern Conference split into divisions.
"I'm worried about tomorrow," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. "I'm not looking at that run. You start looking at that run, and you get caught up. I'm looking solely at one thing. It's not Florida. It's not anybody else.
"It's us, and I want to dig, chew and claw to get every player on our roster better."
Incidentally, the two teams that played for last season's SEC and national titles — Alabama and Georgia — have defeated Vandy this year by a combined score of 110-3.
Death, taxes and Kentucky shutting down Mississippi State in Lexington.
Saturday night was more of the same when the Wildcats and Bulldogs get together at Kroger Field, as Kentucky allowed just 225 total yards in its 27-17 win. The Bulldogs have scored just 26 combined points (17 on offense) during their past three ventures to their permanent cross-divisional foe.
"They were patiently sitting there watching us screw up," Bulldogs coach Mike Leach said. "We tried to be too cute and acted like we had arrived or like we had done something, which obviously we haven't. You never arrive at anything.
"You keep battling and competing, and we didn't do that."
LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels bounced back from the loss to Tennessee by throwing for three touchdowns and rushing for three in a 45-35 win at Florida. Daniels and Joe Burrow are the only Tigers quarterbacks to account for six touchdowns in a game, with Burrow accomplishing the feat five times. ... Derek Dooley, the former Tennessee head coach who is in his first season as an Alabama senior offensive analyst, is now 0-4 in the Third Saturday in October rivalry. ... Arkansas coach Sam Pittman after the 52-35 win at Brigham Young: "We're exactly where we were last year at this point at 4-3. We've got a big stretch, but we need this time off to get healthy."
This wasn't a topic anybody was discussing Saturday night as goal posts were being carried out of Neyland Stadium, but the Vols are bowl eligible.
Tennessee missed out on a postseason experience six times in the 10-season stretch from 2011 to 2020 — including that miserable three-win team two years ago that had too many positive tests for COVID-19 to play in the Liberty Bowl — but this year's Vols have clinched a bowl two weeks before trick-or-treaters show up.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.