Tennessee football’s defense still ranks fifth nationally in points per game allowed and still hasn’t allowed a single opponent to score 20-plus points per game this season.
While the final score still looked good in Tennessee’s wins over Kentucky and Mississippi State the last two weeks, a crack in the armor has started to show itself. The Vols’ run defense has been their bread-and-butter all season, but it’s been exposed in each of the last two games.
Tennessee allowed 168 rushing yards in its 28-18 win over Kentucky before allowing 179 rushing yards in its 33-14 win over Mississippi State last week. It’s the two highest rushing yard totals that Tennessee has allowed so far this season.
“Got downhill. We were out of gaps,” Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said of the issues against Mississippi State. “Some of that was just in out base front coverage. Some of it was pressure off the edge and we’re not playing it the right way. So they hit us on a couple, but I thought we continued to get better throughout the course of the night.”
Over the first seven games of the season, Tennessee was allowing 78.6 yards per game on the ground. Let’s take out the Vols first three non conference games to get a better feel for what the drop off has been like. In Tennessee’s first four SEC games, they allowed just 95.8 yards per game.
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The Vols have allowed 173.5 rushing yards per game the last two games. It’s not like Tennessee faced top level rushing offenses the last two weeks either. Mississippi State and Kentucky’s rushing offenses rank 11th and 12th in the SEC, respectively.
Heupel has consistently talked about poor gap assignments and discipline while talking about the rushing defense problems the last two weeks and that seems fair. Tennessee allowed long runs in both the Kentucky and Mississippi State games. That’s been very uncharacteristic of Tennessee’s defense not just this year but over the past few years under Tim Banks.
One other cause worth looking at is Tennessee losing top linebacker Keenan Pili to a torn ACL on the opening drive of the Vols’ win over Florida. There is some correlation there. The Florida game is the third most rushing yards that Tennessee has allowed this season behind Kentucky and Mississippi State.
However, Tennessee held Alabama to just 75 rushing yards which is one of its best performances of the season against one of the SEC’s top rushing attacks. Pili’s absence definitely is hurting the Vols’ run defense but it’s not the only issue.
Tennessee heads on the road this week to face an uncharacteristically poor Georgia rushing offense. Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs typically have one of the nation’s best rushing offenses. This season they have one of the worst, ranking 15th in the SEC with 124 rushing yards per game.
