Tennessee defensive coordinator Bob Shoop knows how fired up Appalachian State will be coming into Neyland Stadium Thursday night, its sights set on an upset. My reaction when I saw that poll: “That’s quite a mandate for a team that hasn’t won anything since 2007”. The team is 1-0, which is exactly where they wanted to be after one game. Absolutely. And I can guarantee you this: “We will get them corrected”. Our program is all about effort and pride and fighting hard all the way to the end. Tuttle has been brought along slowly as he recovers from a broken fibula, but Tennessee coach Butch Jones said the sophomore tackle would be available Thursday. From my account, he may have had his Heisman moment in overtime to score the go-ahead points and the eventual win. The near miss proved to the team that it must get better in order to win the conference.
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The Vols defense began to step up and held the Mountaineers scoreless in the third quarter, while Tennessee converted a field goal to pull without one possession.
The Mountaineers once again converted on that first drive of the second quarter, going 77 yards in 12 plays and scoring on a 33-yard pass from Lamb to Marcus Cox. Dobbs went 16 of 29 for 192 yards with one touchdown and an interception. Missing that extra point on Appalachian State’s second touchdown had to frazzle him.
In the third quarter, Sutton redeemed his earlier mistake by intercepting Lamb. The 39-yard boot from Aaron Medley cut the Mountaineer lead to 13-6.
The Vols tied it on Dobbs’ 67-yard touchdown pass to Josh Malone with 10:30 left in regulation.
PROTECTING LAMB: The Mountaineers’ chances of staying competitive could depend on whether they give Lamb enough time to throw.
In the closing minutes of the game a 45-yard punt return from Jaquil Capel occurred with the score tied at 13, and redshirt freshman kicker Michael Rubino missed a 42 yard field goal that would have given the Mountaineers the lead.
However, those numbers do indicate that Tennessee played a much better game than people realize.
The effort by Dobbs on a unsafe attempt to leap into the end zone is admirable.
“It took forever to get lined up to get the ball snapped and ended up running out of time”, Satterfield said.
Tennessee needed to recover a fumble from its quarterback in the end zone in overtime. “We had everything go wrong on us tonight”.
Count me in with all of those who feel offensive line play is question number one walking away from this thing. I didn’t see any of them past year until the Camellia Bowl, but if that is in fact how they run their offense every week as Scott Satterfield said in the postgame, they do it very well and it’s not easy to handle. “They didn’t quit”, Jones said. That is just the way the ball bounces. “It kind of hurts us in a way because everybody that we’re playing always references that game to their teams”. Appalachian State was in a fourth-and-5 situation when Lamb threw for the end zone. And Jalen Hurd, he of a rugged 110 yards on 28 carries, getting on top of that football in the end zone in overtime. Even with all of that, it’s still a tough loss to take.
“I’m not into moral victories”.
“We’re deeper here at d-end than I’ve probably been anywhere”, Shoop said. “We never really were not in control of the game, but we never really had complete control of the game”. Again, we played a really good football team.
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After a 2015 season where the kicking game, led by senior Zach Matics provided three final-second wins in an 11-2 campaign, it was special teams play that helped unravel the Mountaineers on Thursday night.
