A look back at how the heck Tennessee football finished third in the SEC East

Nothing would cap off this season better than a bowl win, but first, let’s look at how to Vols overcame a rocky start to become bowl eligible.

You have heard it before, and you’ll hear it more throughout bowl season and during Tennessee’s bowl game. Tennessee football had the worst start it could’ve imagined to start the season.

Tennessee football’s back-to-back losses to Georgia State and BYU to open the season isn’t ideal, but the Vols found their footing with their first win of the season against Chattanooga.

That win didn’t ease Tennessee fans, though, because they knew what was coming next on the schedule. The next four games consisted of @ No. 9 Florida, vs. No. 3 Georgia, vs. Mississippi State, and @ No. 1 Alabama.

That’s a brutal stretch for any team, and it most definitely wasn’t too kind to a one-win Tennessee team. The Vols’ record after the Alabama game was 2-5 with a lone win against Mississippi State in the stretch of games.

If Jeremy Pruitt wanted to get his team to a bowl game this year, that didn’t leave him with much wiggle room to get there, one loss was the max he could afford before his team once again lost its bowl eligibility.

If you only look at those games from the box score and look at the rest of the Tennessee schedule, then you’ll see that Tennessee might finish with three or maybe four wins.

That wasn’t the case, though. If you watched Tennessee through that stretch of games, you would have seen the Vols improve more each game. They showed some sparks in the Georgia game, including Brian Maurer throwing for 259 yards in his season debut.

But Mississippi State is when they were finally able to breakthrough. The offense and defense were both able to put together a good enough game to get their second win of the season.

The Vols also competed against Alabama when no one expected them to. After the Alabama game, everything changed.

It seemed like Pruitt’s players have bought what he is selling, and things were starting to work. I think the team identified who the leaders were on the team, and they stepped up on the field and in the locker room.

Then Tennessee went on a five-game win streak to end the regular season. That also ended a streak we saw come into play last year. In their most recent game, Tennessee had a loss to every SEC team.

A win against Auburn broke that and a near SEC record for most consecutive SEC losses. Tennessee was able to get some of those wins back this year, too.

Now they have a win in its most recent game against Auburn, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt. A lot improvement since Pruitt took over as head coach.

A 7-5 season could not be imagined by a lot of Tennessee fans to at the beginning of the season, but here we are with a chance to have an eight-win season with a bowl win.

Pruitt is doing something right in Knoxville, and I’m here for it. Now we just have to wait until we find out where we’re going for the bowl game and who our opponent will be.