KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For the first time since 1988, Tennessee starts the football season 0-2. It came in stunning fashion with not one, but two overtimes. One final push into the end zone sealed UT's fate: 29-26 BYU the final.
"It's a tough one to swallow, it's hard to figure out how you lose that game," head coach Jeremy Pruitt said.
As 92,475 Vol fans entered Neyland Stadium on Saturday for a night game against the Cougars, the nerves were palpable. After starting off with a huge upset loss to Georgia State, a week two win was what UT needed to get the season back on track and return some confidence to the fan base.
Tennessee was aggressive early and often, perhaps a response to the team's play against GSU. The Vols went for it on fourth down in the first quarter from the BYU 5-yard line, ending in a Jauan Jennings tip-drill touchdown.
Tennessee went for it on fourth down two more times, both attempts in BYU territory, both attempts coming up short. Crucial points left on the board.
"There's two fourth-and-ones in the game we don't get. We have two guys running wide open right before the half for touchdowns that we don't hit, we end up settling for a field goal," Pruitt said.
Those two guys were receivers Jauan Jennings and Josh Palmer. Jennings nearly had three touchdowns on the night, but the second quarter strike from Guarantano was thrown late, giving the defense a chance to get back to make a play. The next play, Palmer was wide open down the field, but Guarantano either didn't see him or didn't feel comfortable with the throw, a move that upset Pruitt.
Where the pass game sputtered, the run game was firing on all cylinders. 242 rushing yards: the most the Vols have accumulated in a game since a win over UTEP in Pruitt's third game as head coach in 2018. Junior running back Ty Chandler finished with 154 of those yards on his own (freshman Eric Gray added 77 yards).
The UT defense came to play for most of the game too, allowing just 109 yards of total offense in the first half, sacking BYU quarterback Zach Wilson four times. Junior safety Theo Jackson led the team with nine tackles while Henry To'o To'o, Darrell Taylor and Will Ignont added eight of their own. One thing the defense didn't do, however, was create turnovers, and when it mattered most, with less than a minute in the game, allowed a 64-yard pass to set BYU up in field goal range to tie the game. From that point on, it was only a matter of time until a two yard gain in double-overtime turned into a pile-pushing-five-yard punch in the face for this Tennessee team, ending any hope of a win for the Vols.
"There were some guys that were fighting out there on both sides of the ball, it was a hell of a game, a competitive game and we didn't make the breaks there at the end," Pruitt said.
Pruitt said in the post game press conference it was a fantastic game fought between the two teams. He's not wrong. When you play games that tight, you win some and you lose some, but this loss hurts even more for Tennessee fans after the bad start to the season. UT now faces a Chattanooga team they should (emphasis on the should) beat before entering SEC play. It only gets harder from here.