Tennessee Football: 3 keys to beating South Carolina

Tennessee Football has to move on from the Alabama loss and get ready for USCjr. If the Vols can continue what they’ve been doing, it’ll be easy.

Last week, I shared three keys to beating Alabama. Those three things proved to play a pivotal part in the game last Saturday, and one could be said to be the reason the Vols lost.

The first thing that I said Tennessee needed to complete was to have more rushing yards than Alabama or at least have a good enough run game to keep the ball out of Jarrett Guarantano‘s hands.

The Vols did that, and if JG didn’t go rogue, this would’ve been a big reason why the Vols won if they were able to pull it off. The Vols finished the night with 114 yards, which is the fourth time they hit the 100-yard mark this season.

The second thing was to keep the passing game limited. Short passes for JG. I wasn’t sure if Brian Maurer was going to play, so I wanted JG to keep the passes under 15 yards.

I think the offensive gameplay did a good job of keeping the ball out of JG’s hands as much as possible, and when they did depend on him, they weren’t throwing it deep every play.

The final thing, and the one thing the Vols failed at achieving, were to have fewer penalties than Alabama. Now, I think Tennessee had a similar number of actual penalties as Alabama, maybe less, but the officials called the game one-way so that the Vols couldn’t achieve that goal.

Let me be honest up front. Tennessee got screwed by the refs against Alabama. The Vols should’ve won that game, or at least had it at a one-score game late in the fourth quarter. With that, I am now over that game, and I’m now ready to move on.

Now that I’ve talked my way through that, it’s pretty simple for South Carolina. The Gamecocks defense is pretty good, but they’re not quite Alabama or Georgia. Even though they’re not the best, don’t be surprised if they come out and play like they’re one of the best defenses in the country.

One thing USCjr’s defense isn’t good at is the run game. The one thing Tennessee’s offense is good at is the run game. Ty Chandler, Tim Jordan, and whoever our future wildcat quarterback will need to force the ball down South Carolina’s throat until they stop it.

Go way against your tendencies and run, run, run. Force South Carolina to blitz the crap out of you until you call a play-action pass on fourth and two in the fourth quarter for a touchdown.

Even though a lot of Tennessee’s penalties against Alabama weren’t actual penalties, the Vols will have to play smarter this week and find ways to keep the refs out of the game.

Find ways to avoid unnecessary roughness and roughing the passer penalties, non-targeting targeting, and blocking that’s disguised as holding. I don’t know how you do it, but the Vols have to remove the officiating from the equation.

The final thing the Vols need to do is the easiest of the three. Simply keep doing what you’re doing on defense. Since the Georgia game, the defense has gotten increasingly better on each snap, so the Vols need to keep that up against a decent USCjr offense.

If the Gamecocks play their eighth string quarterback or whatever number they’re at now, then Jeremy Pruitt needs to find ways to confuse him and force him to make mistakes.

I think there’s going to be a pretty good crowd in Neyland Stadium this Saturday. The defense will have a lot of fans behind them, making it difficult for South Carolina to run their incompetent offense. All we need is for the defense to finish plays and give the offense a chance to score.

This game will be a defensive game, and whoever has the best defense will win this football game. Whatever mistakes South Carolina makes the Vols need to take advantage and put points on the board.

I feel like it’ll be a first to 20 points wins type of game. There are some games where you know going into the game that it’s going to be a low scoring game, and if your team can get to a certain point total, then they’ll win.

I have that feeling about this game, so I’m going to say Tennessee will need 24 points to win.

It’ll be a tough, hard-nosed game this Saturday, and if the Vols can execute on defense, then they’ll be alright. Pruitt outcoached Nick Saban last week, so I hope he can outcoach Will Muschamp. I really want to beat Muschamp.