Tennessee football wasn’t crisp coming out of its second open date of the season but they overcame another slow start to knock off Kentucky 28-18 at Neyland Stadium. The Vols used a pair of crucial turnovers and a beautiful 91-yard touchdown drive to put Kentucky away and to improve to 7-1 (4-1 SEC) on the season.
Here’s a look at the Tennessee football scouting report following the Vols’ win over Kentucky.
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Stock Up
Nico Iamaleava
Tennessee’s offense still had issues against Kentucky and we’ll get to some of those later on. But quarterback Nico Iamaleava was not the reason for them.
In fact, the redshirt freshman quarterback played the best game of his young career completing 28-of-38 passes for 292 yards and one touchdown. If it weren’t for a pair of bad drops from Chris Brazzell and Chas Nimrod then Iamaleava would have had over 100 more yards and two more touchdowns.
Iamaleava made big time throws on third down, mostly limited turnover worthy plays and even made a few big plays with his legs. He took his level of play to another level against Kentucky. The Vols need him to keep growing.
Miles Kitselman
I listed Miles Kitselman as a declining stock following the Alabama game after a handful of pedestrian performances and then a bad one against the Crimson Tide.
He casually bounced back with the best game of his season. Kitselman led all pass catchers with six catches for 97 yards and a touchdown. The super senior had some nice runs after catch and the only target he didn’t haul in was when he took a massive hit in the end zone.
Kitselman was solid in run blocking too including one really nice block on a swing pass to Dylan Sampson.
Stock Holding
Offensive Execution
Tennessee moved the ball up-and-down the field most of the night against Kentucky and easily could have scored 40-plus points in this one when you consider the short field that its defense gave them on a number of occasions. But they weren’t able to execute in those spots.
There were the two dropped touchdowns that we previously mentioned as well as a Dylan Sampson fumble right outside the red zone.
Now missed field goals hurt Tennessee’s offense too, and we’ll get to that in a moment, but on two of those instances the Vols got inside the red zone before going backwards to make the field goal tries more difficult.
Stock Down
Max Gilbert
So about that field goal kicking. I had Max Gilbert trending down after the Alabama game but noted that his stock wasn’t free falling because he missed two kicks of 50-plus yards.
But after missing kicks from 43, 40 and 34 yards, Gilbert’s stock is in free fall. Josh Heupel said everything to back up his kicker after the game and it doesn’t sound like Tennessee is going to make a change there. Still, Gilbert looked like a high level kicker early in the season. He’s become a huge question mark for Tennessee entering the final four games of the regular season.
Linebacker Play
Kentucky ran the ball for more yards against Tennessee than any other team has this season. It could prove to just be a one game blip on the radar. In fact, I’d be surprised if it proves to be an issues for most of the rest of the season.
But the Vols have missed linebacker Keenan Pili the last two weeks. Without Pili, Arion Carter has graded out as one of Tennessee’s worst defenders the last few weeks while Jeremiah Telander has been average at best. The positive is that Jalen Smith has been solid, but my guess is that someone will be able to exploit Tennessee’s linebacker deficiencies later this season.
