'Tennessee’s disastrous 2020 regular season finally came to an end Saturday in Neyland Stadium.
It's a shame this team is being forced by the SEC to play in a bowl game. WVU is going to be more fun. What can I say?
Texas A&M did what they’ve done all year and that’s methodically move down the field offensively and play solid defense.
It’s boring. But at least it’s winning football.
By the time you read this, the college football playoffs will be set. The 8-1 Aggies had an outside shot of sneaking in but were denied. It's just as well as they would've gotten trounced by Alabama again.
A&M’s 21-point win on Saturday never felt like a blowout, but once again Tennessee never put itself in serious position to win the game.
The Vols had two chances with the ball in the third quarter to make it a one-score game, but couldn’t generate enough offense.
They stopped A&M’s first two possessions in the second half. First by forcing a punt, then Alontae Taylor picked off Kellen Mond in the end zone.
The Vols hit a 3rd down deep ball to Josh Palmer to get to midfield, but back-to-back false start penalties turned a 3rd-and-8 into a 3rd-and-18, which effectively ended that drive.
Tennessee just makes losing plays at key moments.
It happens on both sides of the ball. It happens to veteran players and freshmen. Most alarming, it’s happened under multiple coaching staffs.
It’s a culture program bigger than the players and coaches. Which makes it a tough fix.
Jeremy Pruitt has no clue how to create a winning culture. Everywhere he’s been going back to his high school days at Hoover, has been with a successful program.
It’s not Jeremy Pruitt's fault. Neither is being hired for a job too big for him.
Hopefully Saturday was his last game in Neyland as Tennessee’s coach. Hopefully it’s his last game period as Tennessee’s coach.
Even though Tennessee is playing West Virginia in the Liberty Bowl the fitting end to the Jeremy Pruitt era at Tennessee would've been losing to a .500 American team at Legion Field in the Birmingham Bowl. I guess sometimes all the stars don't line up properly here for dark comedy.
*We talked about the UT compliance investigation and absence of Brian Maurer and Eric Gray enough on the postgame show, I’ll refrain from writing about it here. I’m sure Tony has plenty written about it already on here.
Onto thoughts from the Texas A&M game: 
— Not a great game by Harrison Bailey. He held the ball way too long multiple times. He’s not a risk-taker, which is a good thing most of the time. Either him or JT Shrout would’ve been solid options to build the offense around post-Kentucky, but rotating both of them doesn't help either. Jim Chaney has to call two different offenses because of it.
— Shrout’s deep ball to Cedric Tillman was the play of the day for the Vols. It was a nice catch by Tillman, who entered the game with one catch on the season.
— Running game was non-existent without Gray, but why was Dee Beckwith’s only carry the draw play to run out the clock to end the first half?
— Rotated Cooper Mays for Brandon Kennedy at center and K’Rojhn Calbert for Darnell Wright at right tackle often. Again, why?
— Tight ends Princeton Fant and Jacob Warren had big catches on the Vols’ opening scoring drive. Was good to see Warren finally get in the end zone after Fant did for the first time this season last week at vAndy.
— Actually thought the defense played okay for the most part. Coverage busts negated a lot of it, but it felt like Tennessee defended more passes on Saturday than in any game this year. It helps when A&M isn’t a threat to stretch the field vertically.
— Key Lawrence replaced Theo Jackson at Star in the second half and made some nice plays. No idea why he hadn’t gotten more run this year when the secondary ranked in the 100s in most pass defense categories.
— Bryce Thompson is the best player in the secondary and second best player on the defense, but he’s been banged up for much of the year. He’s been on a snap count in recent games, only playing on third downs. So why in the world do we have him on the kickoff coverage unit? He rarely left the field in the second half, but whose decision was it to put him on a special teams unit that’s only given up five returns all season?
— Deandre Johnson’s personal foul penalty after the defense forced a punt late in the first half was a killer. Yes, it was a very questionable call, but you can’t do stupid stuff like that in front of the official. Get the ball back there and Tennessee might’ve only gone into halftime down 17-13.
— No band and a mostly empty stadium is a terrible send off for the seniors, especially guys like Trey Smith and Jarrett Guarantano. Guarantano received more criticism than any player in UT history during his career, but after getting benched was still a good teammate on the sidelines when the easy thing to do was opt-out of the season. He was engaged with the quarterbacks on the sidelines and was trying to pump up defensive players throughout the game. Just wanted to point that out as I’ve been very critical of his play on the field during his time in Knoxville.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see Coach Guarantano lead a high-powered Rutgers team into Neyland and beat Tennessee in about 20 years. That’d be #SoTennessee, as Tony says.
Thank God for basketball! The Vols are rolling and the G League Cats are reeling.
Thanks for reading!
Matt Dixon (@MattDixon3)'
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