Tennessee Volunteers rushing attack is key to surviving tough SEC schedule

If Tennessee football keeps running like this, the Vols will be very hard to beat.

Tennessee football took to the ground game to blow out Missouri football in Week 5.

The Tennessee Volunteers improve to 2-0 on the season and keeps their SEC-best winning streak alive. The Vols are playing with a lot of confidence now and this team looks to be on the rise under third-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt. With the two-headed rushing attack of Ty Chandler and Eric Gray, Tennessee might have the recipe to keep winning games in its SEC gauntlet of a schedule.

Leaning on the run is the best way for the Vols to make their mark in the SEC.

Tennessee crushed the visiting Missouri Tigers on Saturday afternoon to the tune of 35-12. Four of their five touchdowns on the day came via the rushing attack. Gray had 16 carries for 105 yards and a touchdown. Chandler had 19 for 90 yards and a trip to pay dirt. Quarterback Jarrett Guarantano had 10 rushing attempts for 14 yards, but two of those carries went for touchdowns.

With one of the best offensive lines in recent Vols history featuring the likes of Cade Mays and Trey Smith, Tennessee can finally battle with the big boys in the trenches in SEC play. Though Missouri and the South Carolina Gamecocks aren’t anywhere near the best teams in the SEC, a win is a win in conference play, and the Vols now have two of them over division rivals.

What makes this trouncing of Missouri so significant is the methodology in which Tennessee attacked the Tigers defense. They had 51 rushing attempts, as opposed to the 23 passing attempts from Guarantano. Pruitt knows Guarantano can make plays with his arm and his legs, but his erratic nature as a signal-caller has hurt the Tennessee passing game in years past.

While it’s great to get to 2-0, these are Vols wins over the seventh and eighth-best teams on their 10-game schedule. Tennessee still has to play the Georgia Bulldogs, the Kentucky Wildcats, the Alabama Crimson Tide, the Texas A&M Aggies, the Auburn Tigers and the Florida Gators. Their only two other gimme games are against the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Vanderbilt Commodores.

This is a season where if Tennessee does 6-4 or better, it will be seen as a huge accomplishment for Pruitt and his team. The Vols should beat Arkansas and Vanderbilt, as well as Kentucky. They can probably beat Texas A&M. That’ll net them six wins. If they can beat either Alabama, Auburn, Florida and Georgia in addition to this, we can safely say that Tennessee has finally arrived.

Using the run to open up the pass will make this Vols offense even more consistently viable.

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