Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt questions Matthew Butler about a roughing-the-passer penalty during Saturday's game against UTEP at Neyland Stadium. The host Vols won 24-0 to improve to 2-1 overall before beginning SEC play next week.
Mark WiedmerKNOXVILLE - With halftime of Saturday's game against the University of Texas at El Paso just completed and Tennessee ahead 10-0 in a game it was projected to win by as many as 31 points, a call went out to one of the biggest Big Orange fans I know.
"So what do you think of your Vols?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" he replied. "What's the score?"
Huh?
"The first half was so boring," he said, "we've switched to the Braves."
Silly Volniac. If he had only waited, he could have seen his college football heroes explode for 14 points in the final half to wrap up a 24-0 victory over the winless Miners.
Instead, while watching the Bravos lose 7-1 to the Washington Nationals, he missed that amazing 81-yard touchdown gallop down the left sideline by Tennessee running back Ty Chandler early in the third quarter. He also missed a 4-yard touchdown toss from quarterback Jarrett Guarantano to Jauan Jennings with 11:14 to go in the game.
Oh, and let's not forget kicker Brent Cimaglia's three extra-point kicks and his 38-yard field goal to open the scoring - or Tim Jordan's 3-yard run a little more than four minutes into the second period.
Never mind that UTEP had lost previously to Northern Arizona, 30-10, and to UNLV, 52-24.
A 24-point victory margin is a 24-point victory margin and right in line with the margins turned in by the Lumberjacks and Rebels against the Miners.
Besides, as UT defensive lineman Kyle Phillips observed, "We don't want anybody scoring on us."
Mission accomplished, even if the real mission for every Big Orange season begins next Saturday, when the Volunteers and first-year coach Jeremy Pruitt face their first Southeastern Conference opponent of the year in the Florida Gators.
"We better (improve)," Pruitt noted after the UTEP game, "because now the real season starts."
If you wonder how the real season will go over these next six weeks against five SEC opponents, it's tempting to say that you might want to check out the Braves instead. Or the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs. Or the autumn leaves.
While the UT brass is to be highly praised for providing free tickets to all those unfortunate souls displaced by Hurricane Florence, in some ways they got the kind of game they paid for.
Playing as it has thus far, through two expected wins and one dispiriting loss to West Virginia, Tennessee may find it difficult to win any of those first six league games, but especially any one except the Florida game. The Gators also are breaking in a new coach, they also struggled mightily in 2017 (4-7) and the game is in Neyland 20 years after the Vols knocked off Florida on their way to the 1998 national championship, so it's tempting to say the Big Orange can stand 3-1 by late next Saturday night.
And they might. The Gators have lost at home to an unranked Kentucky team and struggled early with underwhelming Colorado State on Saturday. Regardless of the relative scarcity of points on the Neyland Stadium scoreboard, the Vols' defense did limit the Miners to 134 yards (175 yards below their average) and never let them get closer than the Tennessee 33-yard line, and that only after the Vols fumbled a UTEP punt.
Even those numbers didn't especially please Pruitt.
"We had no turnovers on defense, and it's going to be hard to win in the SEC moving forward if we're not creating any turnovers," he groused. "We're going to have to be a team that creates a bunch of turnovers."
That said, the Vols hadn't been committing turnovers on offense before the Miners came to town. Three fumbles (two lost) changed that, but this team still appears to value the football, which is a necessity when your margin for error is as slender as Tennessee's this season.
What is becoming more clear each week is the impact Pruitt's attention to detail and obsession with each week of preparation being exactly like the other week is having on his team. Four of the five players the Vols brought to the interview room after the game spoke of making every day in practice like every other.
Said wide receiver Brandon Johnson of the expected excitement of Florida week: "You can always feel the atmosphere change around you as far as the fans. As for us, nothing changes. Preparation is the same."
Said Phillips of the need to play cleaner football, especially in regard to penalties: "In (the SEC), one mistake can cost you a game."
As Pruitt said, the real games start next weekend. Florida. Then Georgia. Then Auburn. Then Alabama. Then South Carolina.
"Are we ready as a football team?" Pruitt asked. "When you turn the ball over two times and don't get any turnovers, make eight penalties - probably 10 if you count the ones they declined - it would be hard to beat anybody in the SEC playing like that."
Almost as hard as watching it.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.