Tennessee walked out of Columbia with a loss, but the two traits that have defined this team all season still look every bit as real.
The Vols’ 27-24 defeat at South Carolina didn’t knock their identity off track. Tennessee’s run game still sits among the nation’s best, and the pass rush is still wrecking pockets at a national level. That’s the bigger picture after a game in which South Carolina found enough cracks to win, even while Tennessee continued piling up the kind of numbers that have carried this season.
LaNorris Sellers made Tennessee work harder than anyone else has this year. South Carolina’s quarterback found holes in the defense, but most of the damage came when Tennessee got loose with discipline.
From the end of the first quarter until late in the fourth, the Vols settled in and were much sharper. Their pressure on the quarterback kept showing up, just as it has all season.
“I feel like we pretty much got our groove after the first couple series,” safety TJ Metcalf said. “But that can’t happen. We’ve got to start faster, and that’s on the defense.”
Tennessee finished with five sacks, all in the second half, to push its season total to 35. That leaves the Vols one ahead of LSU for the national lead. They also added eight tackles for loss, bringing their season total to 66, which ranks sixth in the country.
Sellers kept finding space when South Carolina needed it most. He had four runs of at least 10 yards, accounting for 76 of his 96 rushing yards. That burst included a 31-yard touchdown that put South Carolina ahead 14-0 and a 22-yard scramble to the Tennessee 10 before he finished the drive with a 4-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter to tie the game.
“Schematically, we have to look back, whatever the play is, whose job it is to contain, what we’re trying to accomplish in that certain scheme and that certain play,” linebacker Amare Campbell said. “But we all 11 have to execute our jobs. And if not, it’ll show.”
Tennessee’s offense kept doing what it has done all season, too. The Vols are averaging 213 rushing yards per game, good for 17th nationally, and DeSean Bishop keeps powering the engine.
Defenses know exactly what’s coming with Bishop, and he still keeps moving the pile. Against South Carolina, he ran for 120 yards and a touchdown on 32 carries.
That performance made him the fifth Tennessee player to reach 30 career rushing touchdowns. He also moved past Montario Hardesty into 10th place on the school’s all-time rushing list with 2,488 career yards.
Bishop’s season now looks even louder on the national stage. He ranks second in the country with 957 rushing yards, just six behind Boise State’s Dylan Riley, and his 11 rushing touchdowns are tied for sixth nationally.
The loss didn’t change Tennessee’s record at 6-2, and the bye week now offers a chance to step back and keep building with four games left in the regular season. The next one comes against Kentucky on Nov. 7.
“Even though we don’t have a game next week, we got to practice and prepare like we do,” Metcalf said. “We just got to go into this bye week with our heads up and just go to work.”
In Other News...
Tennessees Costly 4th-And-1 Breakdown Deserves A Closer Look
A late fourth-and-1 became the kind of moment Tennessee would like back for a long time, with quarterback George MacIntyre unable to execute the intended handoff and the play ending in a loss of yards and a turnover on downs. It was the sort of breakdown that can swing a game in a hurry, and in this case it opened the door for South Carolina to tie things up before going on to win.
Josh Heupel and MacIntyre both pointed to the sequence as a misstep and a miscommunication, which only adds to the sting for Tennessee because the margin for error was already so thin. On a night when one clean exchange might have changed the finish, the Volunteers were left sorting through how a short-yardage call unraveled at the worst possible time. [Read more 🡒]
Tennessee Benefits After South Carolinas Costly Postgame Chaos
Tennessee will collect an unexpected off-field benefit from one of the SECs newest enforcement measures after South Carolina was fined $500,000 for fans storming the field at Williams-Brice Stadium following a game-winning field goal against the Volunteers. The penalty marks the third field-storming fine in the conference this season and the first under the leagues flat-rate system, which replaced a more variable approach to these violations.
For Tennessee, the result is less about the dollar amount than the principle behind it. The money will be paid to the visiting team affected by the violation, giving the Volunteers a direct return from a night that ended in chaos for the home crowd. It is another reminder that the SEC is trying to make field-storming more expensive, even as the practice continues to create problems after close games. [Read more 🡒]
Tennessee May Be Gaining Ground With A Fast-Rising 4-Star Lineman
A fast-moving recruiting target has already put Tennessee on his radar. Cooper Martenson, a rising four-star offensive lineman in the 2028 class, made a trip to Knoxville to take in a game and spend time around the staff, including Josh Heupel, and came away with a strong impression of the program.
Martenson has been building a full picture of his options with visits to other schools, but Tennessee appears to be firmly in the mix as his process develops. He is expected to make an official visit to Knoxville, and his top schools list should come together in the spring, giving the Vols a real chance to keep climbing with one of the cycles more promising linemen. [Read more 🡒]