Joshua Dobbs (11) runs for yardage. The Florida Gators visited the Tennessee Volunteers in a important SEC football contest at Neyland Stadium on September 24, 2016.KNOXVILLE - Mike DeBord's weekly Wednesday meetings with the media typically don't involve much talk of X's and O's or schemes.
Tennessee's offensive coordinator understandably is hesitant to share the secrets for Saturdays he has planned for the Volunteers.
After the way his offense performed against Florida, though, DeBord was more than happy to delve into why certain plays were successful in the second half after Tennessee went into halftime with more missed opportunities than points.
"I don't really ever try to get frustrated," DeBord said. "I try to stay even-keeled all the way through the game. I think our players got a little frustrated, because they had some opportunities to make catches and things like that. We just said, 'Hey, look, we know everything that we have is good.'
"It's amazing, everybody said great job of adjusting at halftime. We go into and halftime, we sit down as coaches and go, 'What do we need to adjust?' Everybody goes, 'Nothing,' and we didn't adjust anything. Everybody says great adjustments and all that, but there wasn't any.
"Butch (Jones) said it in the first half: 'Mike, we're moving the ball and we've got a great plan. Let's stick with it.' He reemphasized it, too. We just went in at halftime and said guys, we're going to make plays. You're going to make plays. You guys are playmakers. We're going to make plays in the second half and it's going to get done.
"Really we stuck with the plan and didn't get frustrated that way."
DeBord took some criticism for the play of the offense in the first three games, but he deserves credit for scheming Tennessee to success against the Gators.
The first touchdown came on a wheel route out of the backfield by running back Jalen Hurd, and the Vols actually set up with a similar look earlier in the game, with center Dylan Wiesman even pulling to the right as he normally would on a running play.
"If you go back to the (Ohio) game," DeBord said, "the first play we gave the ball to Alvin, and Jalen went out on the perimeter and blocked. We had shown that to the field. In this game, we ran the exact same play, but we ran it into the boundary. Jalen went and blocked the guy.
"That was set up by the previous game, as well as this game. We had shown that earlier. It was kind of a set-up that way."
The touchdown pass to Ethan Wolf came out of a new formation where the two tight ends (Wolf and Jason Croom) lined up off the line as wingbacks.
Croom motioned wide and drew a safety to the side of the field, leaving Wolf in a one-on-one matchup with a linebacker.
Quarterback Josh Dobbs did an excellent job of looking off the deep safety on the 67-yard touchdown pass to Jauan Jennings. Florida snuck a safety up into the box and played man coverage across the line. Jennings beat his man off the line, and Dobbs delivered a perfect pass before taking a hit.
The touchdown to Josh Malone may have been DeBord's shining moment of the game.
Tennessee ran the play earlier in the game, but on third down with a 24-21 lead in the fourth quarter, the Vols lined Malone up next to Dobbs in the backfield.
He motioned out wide, but he lined up behind Wolf in the slot. His defender, Duke Dawson, shaded Malone to the outside. Malone had an option route and took off on a slant to the wide open middle of the field, and Dobbs threw quickly despite a protection breakdown freeing up a blitzing safety.
"You're always looking for matchups," DeBord said. "Where does Josh Malone play a lot? He plays on the outside. Well, that put him on the inside. That was something we wanted to get matchup-wise and we were able to get it."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.