Tennessee’s John Kelly stiff-arms Florida DB into another dimension (Video)
Tennessee Volunteers running back John Kelly turned up the physicality in the fourth quarter vs. Florida, and made one Gators DB crumble with a stiff-arm.
It almost feels like a folk tale that the Tennessee Volunteers and Florida Gators facing off meant something grand. The SEC East rivalry has remained over the years, but it’s been quite some time since they were among college football’s elite and duking it out like in the days of Steve Spurrier and Phil Fulmer.
Saturday’s matchup in Week 3 of the 2017 season was perhaps the most shining example of this. These two teams struggled mightily for much of the game. Whether it was the Volunteers missing field goals, the Gators looking generally bad on offense or something in-between, it was just an ugly, ugly game.
But like it always seems to happen in the SEC, things turned up in the fourth quarter. After Florida jumped out to a lead, the visiting Volunteers turned up the heat. Specifically, Tennessee running back John Kelly started not allowing anyone to get in his way. He was key on one drive that led to a touchdown pass. Then the Vols got an interception, and the running back turned it up further.
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Running with tremendous purpose on the outside, Kelly was breaking tackles like nobody’s business. However, he got downright nasty on one defensive back, hitting him with a massive stiff-arm:
That John Kelly stiff arm tho https://t.co/sbTGYLvwhN
— Kevin McGuire (@KevinOnCFB) September 16, 2017
That’s just plain mean, John Kelly. It’s not okay to treat other human beings like that.
Kelly’s run turned out to be big for the Vols. That helped put them on track to score, which they did to tie things up at 20 with under a minute left.
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Unfortunately for Tennessee, things turned out poorly from there. The Volunteers defense, for whatever reason, decided to not put men deep to cover the Hail Mary with only nine seconds on the clock from some 60 yards out. That allowed Feleipe Franks to find Tyrie Cleveland for the win as time expired.