Tennessee quarterback Keller Chryst passes under pressure from Missouri defensive lineman Tre Williams (95) on Saturday at Neyland Stadium.
Mark WiedmerKNOXVILLE - This couldn't have been Derek Dooley's revenge, could it?
Exactly six years after Dooley lost to Vanderbilt in what wound up being his final game as Tennessee's football coach, the offense he now oversees at Missouri destroyed the Volunteers 50-17 inside Neyland Stadium on Saturday.
Of course, that was also the same score as last year's loss at Mizzou, which led to Tennessee firing Butch Jones as coach. A single quote from Vols center Ryan Johnson made it sound as if Butch Ball has not completely escaped the psyche of the Vols players, which might somewhat explain how you can dominate a 12th-ranked Kentucky squad one week - as Tennessee did in a 24-7 dismantling of the Wildcats a week earlier - then fall apart so completely against an unranked Tigers team.
"Snap and clear is something you have to live by as an offense," Johnson said in a direct reference to one of Coach Cliché's most repeated building bricks for success.
But did this loss snap and clear any realistic dreams of a bowl game for Tennessee? Now 5-6 for the season and down to their last guaranteed game, can the Vols snap and clear the Mizzou debacle from their brains over the next few days well enough to snap Vanderbilt's two-game winning streak against them when the two play in Nashville on Saturday?
"We didn't execute well enough today to give ourselves a chance to win," Jones' successor, Jeremy Pruitt, said afterward.
But it still shocks that a team that beat two ranked opponents this season could fall by 33 to an unranked Mizzou squad that stood 2-4 in SEC play at the start of the day and was favored by no more than 6.5 points at kickoff.
Added Pruitt: "I think maybe the speed that they've played with offensively probably affected our guys defensively a bit, whether it was fatigue, poise, adjustments or making calls, because we haven't really played anyone that goes fast in a while."
This game didn't get out of hand all that fast. In fact, the Vols were driving for a touchdown with around 55 seconds to go in the second quarter that would have made this a 19-17 game at halftime. But at that moment, a Keller Chryst pass intended for Marquez Callaway was intercepted by Mizzou's DeMarkus Acy and returned 76 yards to the Tennessee 11. In the final 44 seconds after that pickoff, the Tigers ran three plays, the last of those a 3-yard scoring toss from Drew Lock to Johnathon Johnson that pushed the Missouri lead to 26-10 at the break.
"Just made a poor throw," Pruitt said of Chryst's interception. "Made a good decision of where he was throwing the ball; just didn't execute it."
Chryst - the graduate transfer from Stanford - was in the game at quarterback because starter Jarrett Guarantano suffered a "head/neck" injury earlier in the game. His status for Vanderbilt is unknown, but it certainly wouldn't be a shock if Chryst was the starter against the Commodores. And giving Vanderbilt head coach Derek Mason a full week to devise a disruptive defense for Chryst could finish off Tennessee's bowl hopes.
Or maybe this up-and-down season is headed for a final bounce upward. Yes, the Vols have twice previously lost two in a row this season, so falling to Vandy the week after being embarrassed by Mizzou wouldn't be completely unexpected, but they also have those two wins over ranked opponents to show them the way to turn it around one more time.
Yet this also looked remarkably similar to those earlier games that resulted in blowout losses to West Virginia, Florida and Alabama. The offense was pretty much doubled: 484 yards to 255. There were multiple turnovers leading to multiple scores. There were the third-down-conversion totals: 7-of-14 for Mizzou, 2-of-10 for the Vols.
Nor did Pruitt fail to lean on one of his strongest emotional weapons to fire up the Vols before this one began. Sensing a teaching moment, he stopped his team during the Vol Walk to discuss the passion of the fans who dress head to toe in orange and line up hours before the event begins just to, in Pruitt's words, "watch these guys walk."
He soon added, "It didn't work (as a motivational tool), but I wanted them to see it and understand it."
No, it didn't work.
But why it didn't may be more because of something senior defensive lineman Kyle Phillips said.
"We talked this past week about sustaining, and we did not sustain," he said. "That's how the people at the top stay at the top."
And how teams not on top can beat the No. 12 team in the country one week before giving up 50 points to a team whose offensive coordinator they once fired as head coach. Sometimes snapping and clearing success is harder than snapping and clearing failure.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.