ATHENS, Georgia — Maybe they’ll get to this stage again, before this season’s over, though the Tennessee Volunteers can take solace in the fact that it can’t possibly be this exact stage — Sanford Stadium, where college football’s best offense disintegrated, a Heisman Trophy campaign crumbled and Georgia fans reveled at excess volume all the way until one lurker let out a “Woof!” at the end of Josh Heupel’s post-game press conference.
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The Vols will need help to get there. In the meantime, they need to heed the words Heupel gave them a few moments after No. 3 Georgia throttled No. 1 Tennessee 27-13 and a few minutes before he had to endure one last adult canine impersonation.
“Be real about what happened tonight,” Heupel said.
A lot of things happened, starting with the fact that Kirby Smart’s defending national champion Bulldogs have better players who played like it, against a Heupel second-year roster that has way outperformed its profile and somehow made moot the 30-plus defections that greeted his arrival in early 2021. Georgia is great and is the favorite to repeat. Start there.
Also, Tennessee wasn’t up to the moment. The Vols greeted their largest opportunity yet with their worst football. It took their lone touchdown, with 4:15 left, to allow them to finish with more points than false starts. And for as raucous as this place was, overstuffed and teeming with 92,746 people on a misty Georgia afternoon, seven false starts for a team that runs tempo and uses silent counts regularly is ridiculous.
The Vols have to recognize that they didn’t come with their best against a better opponent — the second part there is the tougher one for players to acknowledge — and they have to flush it and get back to dismantling people. Missouri, South Carolina and Vanderbilt should have no chance of doing to UT’s offense what Georgia just did. The Vols should be 11-1 after a blowout win in Nashville on Nov. 26, and then on Dec. 4 there’s still a good chance they are included in the College Football Playoff.
Those chances were aided Saturday when No. 4 and previously unbeaten Clemson went out and lost 35-14 at Notre Dame. The Tigers aren’t finishing ahead of the Vols if both win out. Michigan and Ohio State, both of which looked shaky at times Saturday in wins over Rutgers and Northwestern respectively, will play and one will take a loss. The Pac-12 and Big 12 remain in play. There’s a lot that can still happen, and it’s likely enough things that can help the Vols will.
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Tennessee’s stated goal of reaching Atlanta and the SEC title game is a long, long shot at best now. It will take two Georgia losses. And it would actually be better for the Vols’ playoff chances if the Bulldogs go ahead and win out — including in Atlanta against whoever emerges from the SEC West, so that team ceases to be a competitor with the Vols for a playoff spot. If Georgia does what it should do from there, Georgia will be the No. 1 seed.
The Vols may have the fourth-best profile but probably wouldn’t be rematched with an SEC team in the semifinals. They wouldn’t have to see the Bulldogs again until a possible advance to the national championship game in Los Angeles — yes, Tennessee at its best can get there — a game that would provide the same challenges as Saturday except free of the earsplitting hostility and misty second-half rain (which is no excuse for anything, to be clear).
Oh and by the way, if the Vols don’t get all the help they need? They’ll probably have to settle for the Sugar Bowl to cap the greatest season since they won it all under Phillip Fulmer in 1998, with tremendous momentum in all aspects of the program Heupel is building. Being real for Tennessee fans right now means having some perspective on how terrible things looked 22 months ago and how no one could have foreseen the dream that has unfolded.
Being real for the Vols means acknowledging, pressing forward, correcting. And hoping. They must hope Hendon Hooker resumes being Hendon Hooker next week and beyond.
That the senior quarterback’s name didn’t show up in this column until the 11th paragraph is actually fitting because his game never did Saturday. He was the clear Heisman favorite entering the game — 36 of 37 voters at The Athletic had him first last week — and he is clearly not winning it now. That may sound harsh, but that’s how these things work. We always talk about Heisman-winning moments but there are Heisman-losing moments too. This game was that for Hooker.
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Georgia was phenomenal. The Bulldogs kept most things in front of them, sent a ton of pressure at Hooker and tackled the Vols in the open field like no one else this season. But they also let Jalin Hyatt get behind them for a touchdown pass in the first half. Hooker overthrew him. They let Bru McCoy get behind them for a touchdown pass early in the fourth quarter. Hooker overthrew him.
When your best player has opportunities in games of this magnitude, against teams that don’t offer many, he has to take advantage. But I think the biggest problem Saturday was Hooker’s lack of awareness in the pocket. The Bulldogs had six sacks, but UT’s offensive line actually did a pretty good job for most of the game in terms of communicating and reacting on pressures.
Hooker simply didn’t see them well enough, including a corner blitz from his blind side that Georgia sent repeatedly. Like it or not, the NFL Draft experts are going to be referencing some of the mistakes Hooker made in this game in the months to come.
Heupel was asked about Hooker’s performance in a few different ways and always answered with “we,” which should be no surprise. There’s no big-picture benefit to publicly criticizing players, and the Vols are only in this position because Hooker has been so phenomenal. This scheme is a lot of fun and provides a lot of problems for defenses, but now you can see how ineffective it can be if the guy operating it has an off day.
“Unacceptable” is how Hooker characterized the interception he threw, but I didn’t even mind that play. It was single coverage and a deep shot to Cedric Tillman. Georgia cornerback Kelee Ringo is a future NFL cornerback who made a textbook play on the ball. It was the open receivers who didn’t get the ball — they were out there — and the sacks that should have been throwaways that were harder to understand.
“There’s a lot of things we will look back on, we will have to be better,” Heupel said.
Hooker will have to be better, if we’re being real. Considering he’s the best quarterback at Tennessee since Peyton Manning, who outdueled Alabama’s Bryce Young, who laid waste to LSU’s loaded defense on the road, who before Saturday had done almost no wrong, you have to like his chances. Considering the picture that is unfolding around Tennessee, he might even get another shot at the only team that has been able to stop him.
(Photo of Hendon Hooker: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
