Tennessee got the same punt formation penalty 3 TIMES IN 1 QUARTER

The NCAA rulebook has some complicated parts.

The number of players the team with the ball has to have on the line of scrimmage is not one.

It’s seven. Whether you’re playing offense or kicking or punting, the team with the ball has to have seven dudes on the line of scrimmage. No more than four men can be in the backfield. This is not a 400-level football theory class. It’s, like, really basic.

Four men in the backfield, plus the punter. That equals five men in the backfield. That means there are six men on the line, which is one fewer than Tennessee needs.

The Vols got flagged for a false start there, according to play-by-play logs, but it’s an illegal formation.

Holy hell. What are you doing? That’s an even more obvious illegal formation, again with five men in the backfield. You’d just been penalized for that like a second earlier, Vols.

It’s not supposed to be this hard to punt. It’s not like the Vols haven’t gotten plenty of practice at punting recently. They’ve punted more times per game than most of the country for a few years now. They should be better at this!

An earlier punt against Georgia didn’t come with the same camera view, but you can see from behind the play that the Vols committed the same infraction:

The line of scrimmage is the Vols’ 49. Four guys immediately jump out as being in the backfield. And if you look more closely, there’s another guy lined up around the 46.5- or 47-yard line, with his body well behind the waistline of the snapper. (That’s the NCAA’s chosen standard for being “on the line.”) The Vols got a 5-yard penalty then, too.

If it happens just once, maybe that’s a player’s fault. It’s not hard to accidentally line up on or off the line of scrimmage due to a brain slip.

But for the punting unit to get caught for basically the same thing twice in one quarter suggests that this problem is on the coaching staff.

The Vols’ special teams coach is former Florida State defensive coordinator Charles Kelly. In practice this week, he should figure this out. It shouldn’t take long.

Special teams were a rare bright spot on the spectacularly bad 2017 team that got Butch Jones fired. The Vols finished 26th in Special Teams S&P+ last year, and they were 18th entering Sunday — well ahead of where they come in on offense or defense.

The punt unit has typically done a laudable job. Joe Doyle entered the day averaging 41 yards per punt with a 2-yard return allowed. He averaged 47.1 yards per boot against UGA, which is strong, and though he kicked two touchbacks, the Dawgs had zero returns.