KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — “Hey!” the fan in the orange golf shirt bellowed, standing over the bent remains of Neyland Stadium’s south goalposts. “Every two years, we’re gonna do this [expletive]!”
Once again, Tennessee beat Alabama in Neyland. Once again, delirious Vol fans stormed the field, tore up turf and pulled down the goalposts. Once again, there’s hope in Knoxville. And for the first time in a decade and a half, there are serious questions in Tuscaloosa.
“What a night on Rocky Top,” Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said after the game, his voice hoarse from cigar smoke. “This is college football absolutely as good as it gets. I love our fans. They hung in there with us tonight, a big part of the game. Hell of a day to wear orange.”
Halloween came early to Neyland on Saturday afternoon. A horde of sloppy, undisciplined football players spent the first half of Saturday’s Alabama-Tennessee game dressed up as the former No. 1 and No. 4 teams in the country. The real deals showed up for the second half, though, and the result was a 24-17 win by the No. 11 Volunteers.
There are no points for style, though, and Tennessee has cleared another hurdle in its pursuit of a playoff berth and a possible SEC championship berth. Two-loss Alabama, meanwhile, faces a much more uncertain path in a crowded playoff field.
No. 7 Alabama had a chance to take the lead with two minutes to go down 21-17, but receiver Kendrick Law got called for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for shoving UT defensive back Arion Carter. Carter had gotten in Law’s face — and threw a punch that appeared to barely miss Law in retaliation — but Law was the only player flagged.
That forced Alabama into a fourth down with 22 yards to go. Head coach Kalen DeBoer opted to go for it instead of punt it away with all three timeouts, and Jalen Milroe’s completion to Justice Haynes was well short of the first down.
The Crimson Tide prevented the Vols from getting a first down and forced the Vols to kick a field goal and extend the lead to seven. Alabama had one more shot to get a touchdown, and that chance lasted all of one play as Milroe threw an interception to safety Will Brooks on Alabama’s first play.
Before Alabama’s two failed comeback drives, Tennessee took the lead for good with 5:52 to go when quarterback Nico Iamaleava found Chris Brazzell II for a fantastic 16-yard TD.
Struggles watered down showdown hype
Two weeks ago, this game was looking like it would be one of the season’s legendary throwdowns, with Alabama at No. 1 and Tennessee at No. 4. But both teams have struggled with a loss and an unremarkable bounceback performance since then, so both came into the game with their SEC championship hopes dented and their auras substantially dimmed.
The first half did little to improve the perception of either team as overrated and/or untrustworthy. Both quarterbacks lacked accuracy, both lines committed penalty after penalty, both offenses sputtered, both kickers missed field goals with ugly efforts, both porous defenses gave up massive chunk plays.
Playing under a magnificent blue sky and before a massive orange crowd, Tennessee couldn’t manage anything close to competence on offense. Iamaleava, a redshirt freshman, is a long way from his early season excellence, and he spent much of the first half sailing passes well over the heads or out of reach of his receivers.
Tennessee’s first-half offense was an ugly parade of failure: fumble, punt, missed field goal, interception, interception, missed field goal. A promising initial drive ended when Dylan Sampson coughed up the ball on the Alabama 20. Iamaleava left the game briefly with an injury, and his replacement, Gaston Moore, immediately threw an interception right into the hands of Alabama’s Malachi Moore. Iamaleava’s return briefly invigorated the Tennessee offense — right up until he threw a horrendous interception on a busted play deep in the red zone.
The only reason Tennessee was even in the game at the end of the first half was because Alabama’s offense was only marginally more competent. Milroe continued to tumble from the heights he’d reached in the first half against Georgia, his scrambles starting too late and his passes off-target. The lowlight came late in the first quarter when, deep in Tennessee territory, he threw an end-zone interception that hit Tennessee’s Jermod McCoy in the numbers.
Alabama managed to get the ball into the end zone itself on its next drive, Milroe finding Ryan (He’s Only 17) Williams for a 5-yard touchdown pass on the one drive of the first half where Alabama looked locked-in. After the Tide missed a late field-goal attempt of their own, that’s how the first half ended. Alabama 7, Tennessee 0, total turnovers 4, total missed field goals 3.
The Vols opened the second half with yet another drive of Iamaleava overthrows and misfires, though at least one — a deep pass on the Alabama 15 to Squirrel White — appeared to be at least catchable. Alabama responded by running eight straight rushes and stalling out at midfield. So whatever halftime adjustments DeBoer and Heupel made, they didn’t have an immediate effect.
Volunteers figure it out after rough first half
On its second possession of the second half, Tennessee discovered something. Sampson broke off a 36-yard run, and then Iamaleava scrambled for another 27 yards right up to the edge of the end zone. Sampson capped the drive with a 2-yard run that tied the game with 6:32 left in the third quarter.
Alabama drove all the way down to the Tennessee 14 on the very next series, but two straight Milroe overthrows in the end zone forced the Tide to settle for a go-ahead field goal to put the game at 10-7.
And then, with just over a minute left in the third quarter, Iamaleava finally looked like the bomb-thrower of the early season. He found a deep target in Dont’e Thornton Jr., who reeled in a spectacular 55-yard pass all the way down to the Alabama 3. One play later, Sampson thundered in for his second touchdown of the game, and Tennessee had its first lead of the game.
It wouldn’t last. Alabama also found its feet — and arm — and executed a near-flawless six-play, 75-yard drive in just over two minutes to retake the lead at 17-14. Germie Bernard caught the drive’s biggest pass, a 28-yarder that once again put Alabama in the Tennessee red zone. And this time, Alabama didn’t risk a pass; Justice Haynes rumbled into the end zone virtually untouched from 7 yards out.
Crushing penalties halted the next Tennessee drive, but the Volunteers’ punt team managed to pin Alabama at its own 4. Milroe narrowly averted a sack that would have been a safety, and Alabama punted the ball back to Tennessee at midfield.
Again, Iamaleava found his mark, laying a pass right into the hands of a diving Brazzell for a go-ahead touchdown. Alabama’s final desperation drive ended quickly when Milroe threw his second interception of the game.
Milroe finished the day 25 of 45 for 239 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. Williams and Bernard both topped 70 yards receiving, but all too often Milroe was erratic and ineffective in both halves.
Iamaleava, in contrast, settled down and found a winning rhythm in the second half. He finished 14 of 27 for 194 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Sampson had 136 yards on 26 carries and two touchdowns.
Afterward, a somber DeBoer tried to find positives in the Tide’s second defeat in three weeks. There weren’t many to be had on the field, so he resorted to pointing to the calendar.
“There’s a lot of season left, for not just us but everyone,” DeBoer said, “and it’s gonna go fast if we don’t take advantage because that urgency has got to be there.”
Vols fans rejoice in another wild scene at Neyland Stadium
As the clock ran down to zero, Vol fans again flowed over the low brick walls surrounding the field, ignoring public-address pleas to remain in their seats. Some puffed on cigars, some embraced, and all sang along with “Dixieland Delight” piped in over the speakers. A few hardy souls managed to pull up chunks of the checkerboard turf that had just been installed after a recent Morgan Wallen concert.
The goalposts came down again, but this time, Tennessee security was ready. They didn’t leave the stadium this time, didn’t end up in the river. This win wasn’t expected, per se, but it also didn’t warrant the exultation of 2022. That victory broke a 15-game losing streak; this one simply broke a one-game losing streak.
Beating Alabama is no longer the ultimate in-season goal for Tennessee; now it’s one step on the ladder. The Vols have much higher goals this time around, and this crucial conference victory sets up the possibility for Tennessee to host a playoff game, or perhaps even earn a first-round bye with a conference championship. With the way the Vols played on Saturday evening — not so much Saturday afternoon — it’s possible to start dreaming bigger dreams.
“We have a chance to be a really good team,” Heupel said. “There are some things we have to continue to improve upon, but there’s nothing better than standing in Neyland Stadium listening to this with 102,000. Go Big Orange!”
At least Alabama is still enough of a notable opponent for Tennessee to warrant a field-storming. Yes, the Tide are now in a world of hurt, but when a victory over Alabama doesn’t warrant a delirious stomp on the turf, that’s when we’ll know the last vestiges of the Nick Saban Era are gone.
