My Two Cents: Just How Good is Tennessee?
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It's not even worth wasting a breath in trying to compare Indiana's football program all-time to Tennessee, its opponent in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl on Thursday night. There is, quite simply, no comparison.
But it also doesn't matter. All that counts Thursday night in primetime on a national stage is for Indiana to play well enough for 60 minutes to get a win.
Are the Hoosiers capable of doing that? Indiana fans would like to think so, because we think we have a pretty good pulse on what this team is after an 8-4 campaign that's been a program-best since 1993.
The outlier is Tennessee. The Volunteers are a hard team to figure, because they were downright awful during the first half of the season, but they've won five games in a row to end the season and get bowl eligible. They reeled off wins against South Carolina, UAB, Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt, and haven't lost since Oct. 19 at then No. 1-ranked Alabama.
In this tale of two seasons, turnovers basically tell the whole story. During the five-game winning streak, the Vols turned the ball over only four times total. In the five losses as part of a 2-5 start, they turned it over 13 times.
"It is all about protecting the football. When you turn it over, I don't care who you are, that's how you are going to get beat,'' Indiana coach Tom Allen said Monday before bowl practice at Fernandina Beach High School. "That was one issue for them, and they were probably not consistent, which is what we are all striving for. When you do not play consistent enough football, we all play good enough teams, even if a team is a mid-major team, they have good enough players to make you pay for those mistakes and turnovers.
And like flipping a switch, the Vols changed. You could say it was the competition, but they were just as prone to turnovers against Georgia State and BYU as they were Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
"They have definitely changed that, and then you start playing with confidence once you start having success,'' Allen said. "Even if you win in a close game, it really doesn't matter how you find a way to win a game. It just starts building and building, just like you have seen them do.
"There is a distinct difference when you watch the last five games and when you watch the first five games. They played Alabama really tough. They are a good football team. When you don't execute the right way and make those plays early on, you come up short.''
That inconsistency is something Indiana can relate to. Even though this 8-4 season has been good, there's also been some bumps, too. Allen gives a lot of credit to Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt and his staff, who just kept on working despite the slow start.
It was all about getting better every day. And they are.
Allen appreciates that.
"They are kind of like how we have been in the past as well. So, it is just a matter of playing at a consistently high level, executing on both sides of the football and protecting the ball,'' he said. "We have to create takeaways and that is something that they want to keep doing as well, and not do it when you are on offense and special teams.
"I think there is a distinct difference, and it is their coaching staff. They have done a really good job and they have really good football coaches and very, very talented football players. This is a good team that we are playing."
Tennessee is a 1.5-point favorite in Thursday's night showdown, which is basically a wash. A lot of experts think that number is too small, because a middle-of-the-pack SEC team is always better than a middle-of-the-pack Big Ten team, but that's not the way a lot of Hoosiers supporters see it.
They see what Tennessee was in September, not what they've become in putting together a winning streak against a bunch of mostly struggling teams.
Allen has been around the SEC long enough to know that Tennessee still has great athletes, especially along the defensive line and at wide receiver.
So he knows the stakes. Winning, Allen says, would be huge.
"It would be a massive win for us. I'm not going to call it anything different than what I believe it to be,'' he said. :"When you haven't won a bowl game in 28 years, it's a big deal. But it's the biggest game of the season because it's the next one. That's how our guys are trained, to believe that. I expect us to play our best football, and if you don't play your best, you're probably not going to win.
"All bowl games are big, but if you haven't won one in a long time, then it's really big. There are so many things, the number of wins, who we're playing, the bowl game that we're playing in, in January, in Florida. I view it as a great opportunity for our guys.''
That's the rub for me. Because of my previous jobs with SEC-based websites, I've watched a lot of Tennessee football in the last five years, enough to make my eyes bleed on some Saturdays. I was foolish enough to pick them to win the SEC in 2016, and then was stunned when they went winless in the SEC in 2017, forcing Butch Jones' firing and, eventually after a screwed-up coaching search, hiring Jeremy Pruitt.
I've followed Pruitt's career closely, too, and it didn't surprise me that Tennessee went 5-7 in his first year, and just 2-6 in the SEC. It also didn't surprise me that they lost their last two games to Missouri and Vanderbilt — MISSOURI and VANDERBILT!! — by a combined 88-30 score.
They lost to Georgia State as a four-touchdown favorite to open this season, and then lost at home the next week to BYU. It looked like the end was near for Pruitt, over before it even got started. Boosters across the Volunteer state were banging on calculators, trying to figure out if Pruitt's $5-million buyout was worth it.
That's the Tennessee I know, a combined 7-12 in Pruitt's first year and a half. I keep thinking I'm not going to be fooled by this winning streak because they beat a Kentucky team that had run out of quarterbacks, South Carolina and Missouri teams that had given up and a UAB team that had bigger fish to fry. And Vandy, well, they're Vandy this year.
A few of the experts I've talked to say that Tennessee's defensive front will destroy Indiana's offensive line, but I'm not willing to go there, especially now that the Hoosiers are healthy up front. I like Indiana's offensive line.
They also say Tennessee's receivers — "a bunch of power forwards,'' Allen calls them — will eat up Indiana's struggling secondary.
I fear that too, but I think the Indiana cornerbacks have learned a lot since the Michigan loss, where they struggled with the Wolverines' big receivers. There's been a ton of technique work since then, and it will make a difference. It also helps that Tennessee's best receiver, Juaun Jennings, is suspended for the first half of the game.
Tennessee fans are — dare I say — a lot like old-time Indiana basketball fans. They live in the past, and not the present. They do have that arrogance that there is no way they can lose a football game to Indiana. That's how they feel.
Sound familiar?
But Indiana is better than its past, far better. And Tennessee is nothing like its predecessors. But when you're balancing that scale, which side is heavier?
For that, we'll have to wait until Thursday.
