Tennessee’s 2018 season ended about as badly as it could’ve: with a blowout loss to in-state rival Vanderbilt.
The Commodores routed Tennessee 38-13 on Saturday night. The Vols managed just 242 yards of offense and watched as Vanderbilt senior quarterback Kyle Shurmur lit up the scoreboard. Shurmur completed 31 of his 35 passes for 367 yards and three touchdowns. Vanderbilt held the ball for 43 minutes of game time compared to Tennessee possessing the ball for just under 17 minutes.
The Vols got beat up and down the field by Vanderbilt. And after the game, Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt didn’t mask his feelings about the loss.
“Lord knows we have a long ways to go, gotta improve,” Pruitt said after the game. “I think our kids improved as the season went. We had a couple guys that got injured late that probably didn’t help us offensively. Really struggled to protect the quarterback, but I just think you have to give Vanderbilt credit. They deserved to win. They outplayed us.”
Tennessee suffered a few injuries during their match-up with Missouri last weekend that affected them this Saturday. Quarterback Jarrett Guarantano took a huge hit on the Vols’ first drive of the game, and he would be taken out of the game by the end of the first quarter. In the second half, wide receiver Marquez Callaway was hit hard on the sideline and didn’t come back into the game afterwards. Running back Ty Chandler suffered a minor injury during practice last week as well.
But it wasn’t just those players who were playing banged up according to Pruitt.
“We’re banged up at wide receiver,” Pruitt added. “Jauan (Jennings) has been kind of, you know, not his full speed for the last couple weeks, and he’s really tried to push through. (Marquez Callaway) was kind of down this week, so we tried to keep a plan that we could execute. We lost (Nathan) Niehaus on Tuesday and lost Jahmir (Johnson) the first half.
“To throw the ball down the middle, you have to protect a little bit. We tried to get the ball out of our quarterback’s hands.”
Freshman offensive lineman Jerome Carvin started at right guard in place of Niehaus on Saturday. Jahmir Johnson was ejected from the game in the first half after he was penalized for targeting after Jarrett Guarantano threw an interception.
The protection issues and lack of a healthy receiving corps led to Guarantano — who was also not at 100 percent — having one of his worst games of his career at Tennessee. The redshirt sophomore completed just 13 of his 29 passes for 139 yards, a touchdown, and an interception.
Tennessee’s offense managed just 12 first downs and 13 total points against a Vanderbilt defense that was allowing over 26 points a game to opponents this season. The Vols averaged 5.1 yards a play on offense, and they picked up a first down on just three of their 13 third down attempts.
That along with Shurmur’s nearly flawless day for Vanderbilt contributed to Tennessee’s 38-13 loss on Saturday.
For Pruitt, the loss ended his first year as Tennessee’s head coach earlier than he wanted. The rebuild at Tennessee still has a long way to go, but Pruitt says he saw improvement in his first year at the helm. That improvement, though, wasn’t enough, and Pruitt plans to hit the recruiting trail hard in order to increase competition.
“I mean, we’ve gotta take the guys that are in our football program,” Pruitt stated. “I thought over the season we learned how to practice. We improved tremendously in how we practiced. But you should’ve seen us in the spring. From where we were at, there was nowhere to go but up. We made a lot of strides doing that. We still don’t have competition. We don’t have competition at certain positions. So you’re either going to play somebody or you’re going to pay nobody, basically.
“We’ve got to recruit to where we can recruit some depth, to where we can get some competition. And when we do that, we’ll get better in a hurry. I think if a young man wants an opportunity to have a chance to play in the SEC really early, this would be a good place to start.”
