Tennessee Sacrifices Linty-Fresh Feeling, Loses to Florida 37-20

Well, that was fun*.

*only applies to certain values of fun

For 35 minutes or so, if you were fooled. It's okay. You'd be forgiven for that. But hey, second half adjustments happen, and credit to Brent Pease for recognizing that Sal Sunseri was taking gambles left and right and figuring out ways to punish it. That's really what the game came down to - a handful of plays in the second half where the penchant to gamble and the need to gamble on defense backfired horribly, and the offense didn't do enough (or, if we're not feeling nice, anything) to recover from it.

Honestly, the thing I came out of this game with was simple: Tennessee got smoked coaching in the second half. You could make a guess that might've happened with the UF defense thanks to last week, but the offensive adjustments? That was new, and it worked.

I'm not going to worry too much about stats or where to go from here - there are concerns (the pass rush never got to Jeff Driskel when it mattered, receiver drops, blocking late, probably twelve other things I don't care enough to note right now if we want to be honest) that need to be addressed, and there's time to address it.

It's awkward thinking that a Tennessee team got completely blown off the field - again - in the second half, but .... well, here we are. I'd have more on this and how Tennessee had - and implemented - one heck of a first half plan, but there's this thing called the second half, and that second half happens after the first half, and so these are the impressions we'll have.

Akron is next week.