Cigar smoke filled Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday night. Those cigars did not come from orange and white boxes.
There was no field-storming or goal-post tearing down. It was routine. Tennessee losing in Tuscaloosa has become routine.
The Vols haven’t won on the road against Alabama since 2003. That didn’t change on Saturday as Tennessee fell 34-20.
The score certainly doesn’t tell the whole story of Saturday night. The game actually started as good as someone would want for the Vols (5-2, 2-2 SEC).
Joe Milton III orchestrated an eight-play, 75-yard drive that got Tennessee on the scoreboard. It was capped off by a highlight catch from Squirrel White.
A couple of field goals and another Milton touchdown pass gave Tennessee a 20-7 lead going into halftime.
It was the first time Tennessee had a 13-point lead over Alabama on the road since 1999 — a dream scenario for the Vols.
The dream turned to a nightmare very quickly in the third quarter.
Alabama came out and took just two plays to go 75 yards and find the end zone.
“End of the day, reset, gotta keep coming, keep playing,” Tennessee football head coach Josh Heupel said. “And we did at times offensively. Don’t put it in when we get down there, with seven, eight minutes left and you got a chance to make the game.”
The one touchdown snowballed. Tennessee was called for signaling a fair catch by an up-man.
That pinned the Vols at their own 4-yard line after the play. The offense couldn’t get anything going and was forced to punt.
From there, it was all downhill. Nothing different happened during halftime to contribute to the bad second half, though.
The players all echoed the same message
“’Let’s go step on their throats,’” White said of the halftime message. “But obviously, we weren’t able to do it.”
“I believe that we came out with a lot of energy. The message was just the same. You got to play all four quarters. Tonight, we didn’t get it done,” Gabe Jeudy-Lally said.
The Crimson Tide managed to outscore Tennessee 27-0 in the second half. Nothing went right for the Vols.
The offense stalled, penalties increased — to the displeasure of Heupel — and Alabama took all of the momentum. The loss was reminiscent of Tennessee’s trip to Florida.
“You got to come out swinging early,” Milton said. “You got to put a guy to sleep early. I feel like if you do that, I feel like then all the momentum would be on our side for the whole game.”
Alabama ran for 131 yards in the second half, after rushing for just 16 in the first half. Milton was blindsided and strip-sacked, one of Alabama’s second-half touchdowns.
Tennessee’s offense picked up 275 yards in the first half but finished with 404 total. A lot of those yards came near the end of the game in crunch time.
To make matters worse for the offense, the running game was nonexistent for most of the night. Milton led the way on the ground with 59 rushing yards on 15 carries. The next closest was Dylan Sampson with 28 yards.
“We just let go of that rope, got comfortable,” linebacker Elijah Herring said. “Felt like we won the game already.
“It’s tough out there when things are flying around. Guys got to snap and re-clear. I mean, it seemed like we couldn’t do that today.”
Herring denied that is was complacency after halftime, but the message from Saturday is clear. The Vols had the game in hand and couldn’t finish the job.
The trend is becoming a lot more common for Tennessee on the road. Mistakes snowball into bigger mistakes which snowball into losses. It happened at Florida. It happened at Georgia last year. It happened again on Saturday
A lot of their goals get a lot tougher with the second SEC loss. A road trip to Kentucky awaits Tennessee, who has played poorly on the road.
“I mean, the communication is the only thing that, in my opinion, that’s really more difficult,” Heupel said of the road. “As long as you are settled into your job and doing that when you’re out between the white lines. Today, it’s a good football team. We’re talking about Alabama.
“We didn’t reset, refocus and make enough plays in the second half. End result.”
