If Tennessee finishes strong and gets a break, the Vols might ... have to play Bama again

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Good news, Tennessee. Your storybook season is limping noticeably but still alive, technically! In fact, if you want to play Alabama again, just win all your remaining games, and you probably will (more on that in a second).

But Alabama just absolutely decimated you, 49-10. Your offense averaged 2.6 yards per play. The Tide’s freshman quarterback, Jalen Hurts, ripped your front line to pieces.

These were your head coach’s first words after the game: “When you give up 438 yards rushing, and offensively, you have 32, you’re not giving yourself an opportunity to win a game,” Butch Jones said.

This was not a Hail Mary or single overtime play. You got knocked out, and then Alabama kept hitting you. We saw it.

”Absolutely. That’s definitely on our mind. We would love another shot,” Vols tight end Ethan Wolf said after the game.

“But the mantra is that we’re not gonna get there if we don’t start with the preparation. It may sound cliche right now, but if we don’t come out next week prepared, [a rematch] won’t be an issue.”

Tennessee scored a field goal late in the third quarter to cut Bama’s lead to 28-10, and on the first play of Bama’s next drive, Hurts floated a 31-yard fade to Calvin Ridley down the left sideline. That single play was visibly demoralizing. Tennessee’s injured defense was throwing itself at Bama’s run game to no avail, and then the Tide picked apart the Vols’ cheating secondary to help stop the ground game. Seven plays later, Hurts skipped into the end zone for his third of three rushing touchdowns.

Bama ran all the hell over Tennessee, a lot of it laterally with disgusting speed, a lot of it with motion and tempo, and almost all of it with success. Hurts finished with 132 yards rushing, Bo Scarborough with 109, and most of Hurts’ 143 passing yards could’ve been considered part of the run game. Even the official scorers in UT’s press box debated differentiating handoffs and flip passes to sweeping receivers and backs. Bama was faster all day, and offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin installed a barrage of jet sweep options on which two-foot dump passes turned into massive rushing gains.

“I think what they did a good job with was creating one-on-one match ups for [Hurts], whether it was a drop down safety, whether it was a corner, whether it was a scraped LB, they run the run the same stuff we run. He was able to do a good job laterally and then to puncture the defense vertically,” Jones said.

Florida is 3-1 in league play after beating Missouri and is thus one game ahead of UT. The Vols have the head-to-head tiebreaker and need to win out, but also need UF to lose a game.

But the Vols’ remaining conference schedule — at South Carolina (No. 77 in S&P+ entering the weekend), Kentucky (78), Missouri (48) and at Vanderbilt (95) — is weak, while the Gators still have South Carolina and Georgia (47) plus road games at Arkansas (29) and LSU (8).

According to Football Study Hall, Tennessee’s average win probability in its final four league games is about 85 percent. The Gators’ is about 70 percent, with the LSU game slightly in the Tigers’ favor, especially now that it’s in Baton Rouge (it’s easy to see why the Vols wanted that game played).

Alright, say the Vols make it to Atlanta. The title game hasn’t featured a rematch since 2010 (South Carolina vs. Auburn), but when it has happened, the incumbent winner is 5-1. Saban has twice seen the same team twice in a season; his LSU national title team beat Georgia twice in 2003, and he split with LSU in 2011.

It’s hard to talk about a two-loss Vols team that was blown out at home later making the College Football Playoff, but hey, let’s get crazy. The highest a two-loss conference champion has finished in two years of Playoff metrics was Stanford (No. 6) last season. The Cardinal’s best wins were vs. a Notre Dame that ended up in the Fiesta Bowl and a few eight- or nine-win Pac-12 teams.

So far, Tennessee’s two losses look better than 2015 Stanford’s (Northwestern and Oregon), but if the Vols were to win out and beat an undefeated Alabama, they might still need help, as that’d further open the door to the Big Ten or ACC getting two teams in.

Alabama is now inarguably the best team in the SEC, even with Texas A&M still pending. The Tide have 11 non-offensive touchdowns this season (including Ronnie Harrison’s 58-yard interception return and Eddie Jackson’s 79-yard punt return on Saturday). That’s as many as Stanford had on offense entering Saturday night.

Behind an injured offensive line, pass protection was woeful for Josh Dobbs. The Vols’ first three drives ended in sacks of 17, 10, and 10 yards on third downs. On his next third down, Dobbs overthrew a screen, Harrison’s pick six.

The best case scenario for Tennessee or Florida or anyone else is to win the SEC East and get A&M or LSU, which hosts the Tide on Nov. 5. The Vols and Gators could see their chances at a conference title swing wildly, depending on Aggies-Tide next week.

If Bama wins, you have to do this all again.

“I’m going back to watch the film and learn, and the entire defensive line and defense will. But I wouldn’t say they dominated us,” defensive lineman Derek Barnett said after the game.

Nah, man. They dominated you, and you might have to do it again in seven weeks.