Tennessee had been beaten this season, but the Vols had not been humiliated until the final half of the regular-season finale. But they were. So now what?
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — This was different.
Everyone knew heading into this weekend that Tennessee had played itself out of a return trip to the College Football Playoff, but the Vols had never embarrassed themselves.
They lost three of their first 11 games, but none of those losses were embarrassing. At least two of the three losses could and should have been wins, and they weren’t, but between the margins of those games and the caliber of those opponents, those in orange could wake up the following morning free from the shackles of shame.
Saturday’s second half against Vanderbilt was different.
For the first time this season, Tennessee had a belt taken to its backside. A 21-14 lead heading into the final seconds of the first half turned into a 45-24 loss to in-state rival Vanderbilt at Neyland Stadium.
Tennessee’s effort didn’t seem to be an issue. Nearly everything else was problematic, though, and the play on defense in particular was shockingly poor.
Vanderbilt senior quarterback Diego Pavia might not be as dynamic as he is polarizing, but only because he and his family are so uniquely polarizing. He’s plenty dynamic. If he gets invited to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist, few could objectively object.
His decision-making with the ball isn’t as risky as his persona, but he does take serious risks with the ball, and occasionally, they’re punished. But goodness gracious, the dude can make plays. He might quarterback Vanderbilt — Van. Der. Built. — to the College Football Playoff. If you can’t give someone credit for that, exactly who or what in college football deserves credit?
He’s got some pieces around him, for certain, and there are hardly any underclassmen on the Commodores’ depth chart, but he is the engine that propels one of the most reliable offenses in college football. Nothing about Vandy’s past two seasons happens without him. None of it.
So … yeah … he’s good. Really, really good.
But he’s not as intergalactic as Tennessee made him look Saturday. The Vols made him look like Superman.
Pavia made at least three overly aggressive throws in the first half of the game, and Tennessee intercepted two of them.
After that, though, the Vols barely touched him. Literally. He spent most of the game in open space. Whether he was given open space or wiggled his way into open space — and there was plenty of both — he spent significant parts of most plays in open space.
Time after time after time, the sea parted, and he led the Dores to freedom. An invisible bubble surrounded him, and Tennessee rarely poked through it. How many times have ball carriers seemed so close and yet so far from defenders? If it wasn’t Pavia, it was running backs Sedrick Alexander or Makhilyn Young. But usually it was Pavia.
Vandy’s quarterback has several times in the past two years said exactly what he and his team would do to Tennessee. Even when the Vols humbled him last season in Nashville, and he knew they’d need to go to Knoxville the next season, and he knew exactly how rare Vandy success is in Knoxville, he kept talking. And then he backed it up in a big, big way, delivering one of the biggest wins in Vanderbilt’s modern history.
Pavia completed 18 of 28 passes for 266 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions, and he added 165 yards and another touchdown on 20 carries. Forgive someone this age making this reference, but he did what the kids call – or at least very recently used to call — “standing on business.”
He and his teammates were the first team this season to rub Tennessee’s face firmly into the ground. And they did it at Neyland Stadium — a place where Vandy had won just eight times in more than a century. The Dores had beaten the Vols just 13 times anywhere in the past century.
Georgia came back to beat Tennessee this season in Knoxville, but it didn’t humiliate the Vols. Oklahoma came back to beat Tennessee this season in Knoxville, but it didn’t humiliate the Vols. Alabama seized momentum on a game- and season-turning play to end the first half, and it beat Tennessee in Tuscaloosa, but it didn’t humiliate the Vols.
Vandy humiliated the Vols. Full stop.
The Dores rushed for 176 yards to Tennessee’s minus-6 yards on the ground in the second half. They made nearly play they should have made in the final two quarters, and they made some plays that weren’t really there to be made.
Neyland’s crowd tried to will Tennessee back into the game, as it always does, but it didn’t work. Tennessee’s defense could not get off the field, and the pressure of needing to score every drive ultimately took a toll on a Tennessee offense that slipped in the third quarter and came apart at the seams in the fourth.
If Vandy didn’t commit a turnover and didn’t commit a huge penalty to get behind the sticks, it scored. It was that simple. The Dores punted one time in the game, and zero times after the break.
Tennessee’s defense has been criticized several times this season, and much of that has been fair. But some of it hasn’t. The Vols poured premium NIL money into star cornerbacks Jermod McCoy and Rickey Gibson III, and they were too injured to play more than one quarter — combined — this season.
Star linebacker Arion Carter limped his way through the second half of the season with turf toe, trying to fight through it while looking like a fraction of his best, and ultimately, he spent multiple games in street clothes. Some of the team’s big, upperclassman defensive linemen either came into the season or, at points during the season, suffered significant injuries.
Then there was the situation with sophomore Boo Carter, a mercurial young man the Vols hoped to change but failed to change, and that proved to be a gargantuan waste of time, effort and resources. His acting-a-foolishness returned in the summer, precisely when the staff didn’t have time to replace him. Those situations were, by any fair definition, big roadblocks for the Vols to overcome, and sometimes they weren’t overcome.
But there was no great shame in that.
Disappointment? Sure. Shame? No. Great shame? Heck no.
Until this game.
This was shameful, shambolic, silly. This was intolerable, insufferable, insupportable. This was unsatisfactory, unseemly and unspeakable. If this were your child, you would feed it before bed only because the state makes you. It darn sure wouldn’t get dessert.
Saturday was one of the worst Tennessee defensive performances these eyes have seen. And these eyes have seen some bad performances from various collections of Vols over the years.
Perhaps that seems harsh. Good. It’s supposed to be harsh.
This Tennessee staff has been in Knoxville too long to accept the performance that was put on this field on this day. To Heupel’s genuine credit, he and his staff have restored the standards this program has had for most of its history. But Heupel and his staff have been rewarded for that, financially and otherwise. They are not paid to allow 45 points and 582 yards to Vanderbilt. They are not paid to force one Vanderbilt punt in a 60-minute game. And, hey, this era is what it is, so let’s lump the players into that. They, too, are not paid to perform like this.
Saturday’s performance — especially the second half — absolutely will change the mood in and around the Tennessee program heading into this offseason. It will, and it must.
Heupel’s resurrection of the program has earned him more than enough goodwill to fix this, but he must fix this.
Three times this season, opponents came to Neyland and won. And the final one was Vanderbilt. And the Dores humiliated the Vols down the stretch. They played with their food, and they enjoyed every moment of it. Given the history of this rivalry, why wouldn’t they? And Tennessee’s performance allowed that to happen.
If there’s any good to be gained from this, perhaps it’s the fuel it should give everyone in the program heading into this offseason. The Vols essentially were eliminated from the CFP when they lost to Oklahoma, so their biggest motivation in the moment for this weekend was making sure Vandy wouldn’t make the field, either. Sad trombone.
In the big picture, though, perhaps sitting and stewing on this is better in the long run. If there was any doubt whatsoever that Tennessee needs to rethink some things moving forward, that just got put to pasture.
So what must change for Tennessee on defense and special teams? The results. Duh.
What’s the best way to change those things? That’s where it gets more complicated.
Can you really fire defensive coordinator Tim Banks just one season after he was a finalist for the Broyles Award as the best assistant coach in college football? Sure, you can. But should you? Some say yes. This writer isn’t sure. One man’s explanation is another man’s excuse, but the injuries and the Carter situation were factors for much of this season’s disappointment on that side of the ball, and if the Vandy game hadn’t happened, you could make a decent argument that the defense improved a bit later in the season, and that a healthier 2026 would look more like 2024.
But the Vandy game happened, and it was brutal, and Vol Nation wants a head on a spike. If Banks wants to stay, Heupel is taking a risk with any decision he makes on that front. Keep him and have a similarly bad season on defense, and the nature of sports in this era suggests your own head is risking a close encounter of the spikey kind. Dismiss him, and you run the risk of having a Phillip Fulmer-Dave Clawson marriage that ends badly for everyone involved.
And it’s not just Banks. There are other staffers involved, obviously. And, of course, there’s the roster construction — which has never been close to as difficult as it is in this era. Every player you have can leave, no matter which staffers you hold and which ones you fold. Some of those departures wouldn’t bother you. Some would thrill you. But some would bother you in a big way.
The portal isn’t a one-way path. Every coach, every season, loses players they don’t want to lose — and not just to the NFL. Every player you want to keep is a player that some or all of your peers would love to take from you, and sometimes they succeed.
Heupel — at least from this vantage point — has earned the right to manage this situation as he sees fit. If you hire someone to do a job, you let them do that job until they prove they can’t be trusted, and in turn, they own the results. That’s how this works.
The bottom line is Tennessee must put a better defense and better special teams units on the field next season, or the Vols won’t sniff the CFP. What they did in those areas this season wasn’t good enough, and it cost this team a playoff spot. Many thought Tennessee would be an 8-4 team, and the Vols were indeed an 8-4 team, but anyone who saw those games knows this should have been at least a 10-2 team, and that record would have landed them a second consecutive playoff berth — and another first-round road game and likely another first-round exit, but still a second consecutive playoff berth.
Every setback can be an opportunity in disguise. Perhaps, in the long run, clawing back into the first round of the CFP and getting another loss would have been worse for Heupel and his Tennessee tenure in the long run. Perhaps, in the long run, getting boat-raced by Vandy in The General’s House will tip the scales in Heupel’s mind about things that must change for the Vols to reach the place the program feels it belongs.
As long as Heupel’s in Knoxville, the Vols will put points on the board. They lost so many critical components from the 2024 offense, including the SEC Offensive Player of the Year, and then their starting quarterback bailed on them the day of their spring game.
Heupel drew a line in the sand, telling Nico Iamaleava and his family to kick rocks, and he was just getting started. He brought in the player Iamaleava replaced at UCLA, and that player — Joey Aguilar — had a better season than Iamaleava and led a team much better than Iamaleava’s Bruins.
It was a season of frustration for the Vols in many ways, but they won that trade by a million country miles, and they proved a point in the process. How they managed the Iamaleava and Carter situations from the outset obviously proved problematic and counterproductive, and they’ve learned some hard lessons in the NIL market, but they won the Iamaleava trade, and we’ll see what they learn from the Carter conundrum.
You’re free to think whatever you want and worry about whatever you want, but betting on Heupel’s offense remains historically a safe bet. There are many more legitimate concerns in other, equally important places, though, and Heupel must find a way to surround himself with coaches and players who strengthen him where he’s weak.
He’s earned the right to go find those people, but he must find them, and he must find them soon. Tennessee’s standards have returned, and you can’t be this bad on defense at this place in consecutive seasons. That way lies change at the top.