Entering the halftime locker room, DeSean Bishop looked destined for a 1,000-yard season.
He sat with 92 rushing yards as he trotted into the tunnel, only 22 away from reaching one of the benchmark milestones for a running back. More importantly, Tennessee and Vanderbilt were knotted at 21 on the scoreboard through two quarters of play in a game where both squads had enjoyed their fair share of ups and downs. A pair of stanzas later, things couldn’t have looked more different.
Bishop’s hopes for a big night wasted away. He ended a blowout loss to the Commodores with 97 yards to his ledger, a part of a team effort that failed to generate any positive gain via the ground in the second half. In the redshirt sophomore’s eyes, Vanderbilt didn’t do anything in particular to limit his legs. Tennessee simply didn’t execute.
“Truly, I don’t know,” Bishop said. “I’m just sitting here still kind of trying to analyze everything. I got to look at the film, to be honest. I feel like we got away from the run game a little bit. I think I finished with like six carries in the second half.”
It’s not like the Vols found themselves in a position where they needed to press the football downfield through the air because of a steep margin on the scoreboard. Tennessee averaged a solid 4.7 yards per rush during the first half on 19 attempts. Bishop enjoyed a 35-yard scamper of his own into the end zone to give his team its only lead. It didn’t reflect the Vols’ best rushing half of the season, but red flags certainly didn’t appear.
The final two periods saw Tennessee run the ball 12 times while Bishop amassed a measly five total yards.
“I guess it’s just a mindset at that point, to try and run the ball,” Bishop said. “I just feel like it wasn’t there. Me, the offensive line, just everybody not on the same page with it.”
The lack of production can be mainly attributed to a third quarter that featured 11:46 of Vanderbilt possession time, an element that kept the Vols’ offense off the field. When Tennessee’s offense did have a chance with a still manageable deficit on the scoreboard, it went three-and-out in deflating fashion.
After that point, any chance the Vols had at trying to reestablish the running game disappeared as the Commodores’ lead ballooned.
“Extremely disappointing second half leads to a extremely disappointing ultimate result,” head coach Josh Heupel said. “And coaches and players all play a part in it. So give (Vanderbilt) credit, but extremely disappointing in what we did in the second half.”
Tennessee’s season-long successful scheme of rotating its running backs appeared absent. Daune Morris and Star Thomas each had one carry apiece, while Peyton Lewis missed the game due to injury.
“Regardless of how good you’re playing, you got to earn everything,” Bishop said. “Every single snap, every single minute that you step on that field. I just believe that we didn’t earn it tonight. They got the better end on that second half. I don’t know what we went into halftime thinking. When you don’t earn it, especially in this league, you’re going to be on the wrong side of it.”
