It felt like ’98 on Saturday.
At least for the first half of the first quarter it did.
Then it felt like 2012 or 1910 the rest of the way as Oregon did what everyone expected them to do and ransacked the UT defense for nearly 700 yards en route to a 59-14 win over the Vols in Eugene, Ore.
The loss – Tennessee’s worst in 103 years – should evoke respect for Oregon more so than it evokes admonishment of Butch Jones’ first UT team.
Oregon is an established national power with a firm identity and talent flowing out of its ears.
Tennessee is. Well, what exactly are the Vols at this point in the season?
Easy victories against Austin Peay and Western Kentucky revealed little about this team. Likewise, Saturday’s loss to Oregon shows nothing except that Butch Jones is human and not an invincible, slogan-spouting robot.
Certainly, most know what the program will eventually be – or at least what Jones desires for it to be. Everyone knows what the program used to be.
But three games into the 2013 season, any analytical grasp on the status of “Team 117” is just a grasp at straws.
Finally, in the fourth week of the season, UT may find itself playing in a football game that is still undecided in the third quarter when it travels to Florida on Saturday.
At the least, hanging around in next week’s 3:30 p.m. game against the No. 19 Gators is an admirable goal for the Vols. It’s a realistic one as well.
Florida lost to Miami during week two and was underwhelming in its season opener against Toledo.
Sure, the Gators are coming off a bye week, meaning they’ve had time to prepare for UT. But do they even know what to prepare for?
Based on the first three weeks, there is no player on UT’s perimeter worth devoting extra film study to.
Quite simply, the only thing the Gators have to be afraid of is UT’s offensive line and running game. Florida held Miami to 50 yards rushing, though, so Will Muschamp is not quivering at the possibility of Marlin Lane or Raijon Neal running wild in The Swamp.
Defensively, UT’s seven forced turnovers against Western Kentucky will be enough to make the Florida coaches scratch their heads considering that the Gators committed five of their own against Miami.
But it’s more likely that Florida will lick its chops over the loose ends Vols showed against Oregon than stress over the repeated strokes of fortune that UT stumbled upon in a win over a Sun Belt squad.
The post-Oregon version of the Butch Jones television show provided a perfect example of what Tennessee must do heading into the Florida game.
Midway through the highlights portion of the show, the action suddenly jumped from the middle of the first quarter to UT’s second and final touchdown of the game in the fourth quarter and then it moved on to a segment unrelated to the Oregonian massacre.
If the Vols can forget everything that happened against Oregon as fast as that show’s producers, they might be able to hang with Florida next week.
A ten-point loss to the Gators would not necessarily feel like ’98, but it would feel less like 2012 than the Oregon game did, and that would be a step in the right direction for a team that does not yet have a solid bearing.
David Cobb is a junior in journalism and electronic media. He can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @DavidWCobb.
