Last Saturday night’s Oklahoma-Tennessee football game began with a touchback and the Sooners starting at their 25-yard line.
On the first play from scrimmage, Volunteers defensive tackle Elijah Simmons broke through Oklahoma’s offensive front and stuffed running back Javontae Barnes for a 5-yard loss. Simmons got to Barnes despite being held by Sooners center Branson Hickman.
“He set the tone with the first play of the football game, just being violent and destructive,” Vols coach Josh Heupel said this week. “He played that way all night long.”
The 6-foot-2, 340-pound, sixth-year senior out of Nashville’s Pearl-Cohn High School collected the first of Tennessee’s 11 lost-yardage stops in the 25-15 downing of the Sooners. The claim Simmons set the tone is actually an understatement given that Oklahoma rushed 34 times for 36 yards for an average of 1.1 yards per carry.
“They didn’t really run it a lot after that,” Simmons said.