With an offense averaging 510.1 yards and 46.5 points per game, Tennessee has a good grasp of football’s blocking, rushing, passing and catching elements as the calendar flips to November.
The tackling aspect of the game is an entirely different matter.
“That’s a big point of emphasis this week,” sixth-year senior defensive lineman Dominic Bailey said Monday in a news conference, “because in the last couple of games, our tackling has been terrible.”
In last Saturday night’s 56-34 win at Kentucky, a slew of missed tackles helped enable the Wildcats to rack up 476 yards, 6.5 yards per snap, 25 first downs, more than 36 minutes of possession time and nearly a 50% success rate on third-down conversions. The Wildcats, even after Saturday’s big showing, rank 13th in the Southeastern Conference with 361.3 yards per game.
Missed tackles have been an issue for much of this season for the No. 14 Volunteers, but that topic is very much now out in the open, with junior linebacker Jeremiah Telander agreeing with Bailey’s “terrible” assessment.