Tennessee's Close to Regular Season a Positive Sign for Butch Jones Era

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In the moments following Tennessee's 53-28 thorough thumping of Vanderbilt, Volunteers coach Butch Jones offered an emphatic opinion of what he thinks of his team right now.

"I believe we are one of the best teams in the country, and our players believe that," Jones said of the 8-4 Vols who won five consecutive games to close the year. "There is a lot of positive energy surrounding our program."

After an annihilation of a Vanderbilt team that is a "rival" by geography only, Jones' declaration is hard to argue. The only blemish on UT's schedule in the past seven games is a 19-14 loss to SEC West champion Alabama in a game the Vols led in the waning minutes.

In Tennessee's four losses—to Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama and Arkansas—the Vols had late leads. They wound up losing all four by a combined 17 points. 

This may not be the massive step UT could have enjoyed had it not collapsed down the stretch at home against Oklahoma and on the road against Florida. But given the way the Vols finished the year, there's no denying the program's direction.

It's surging, and earning a style-points victory that featured 523 total yards and 53 points against a Vanderbilt team that had been allowing just 18 points per game comes at the ideal time to impress the bowl representatives. 

The dominant win also put a little swagger in the step of a team that was widely ridiculed early in the season but wound up rounding into one nobody wants to play right now.

"Every time we beat Vandy, it's a good feeling," said UT defensive end Derek Barnett, who had two sacks including a momentum-seizing safety. "They talk a lot, and we just go out there and play ball. We let the scoreboard talk at the end of the day."

Saturday wound up being a Big Orange highlight reel.

Quarterback Joshua Dobbs finished with 233 total yards and accounted for three touchdowns, including two scoring tosses to senior Von Pearson. Jalen Hurd shrugged off a bad first half to finish with 120 rushing yards of his own, and Alvin Kamara had 151 all-purpose yards. 

Had UT kept Dobbs and Kamara on the field for longer, it would have finished with three 100-yard rushers in one game. Dobbs finished with 93; Kamara with 99.

As it turned out, the fact that they didn't reach those milestones were an even greater indicator of the lopsided outcome. UT's starters watched basically the whole fourth quarter.

Patrick Murphy-Racey/Getty Images

By then, the scoreboard had done all the talking necessary.

For these Vols who struggled so mightily at the beginning of the season, that quiet defiance has been a cornerstone down the stretch. 

Label this team choke artists after Oklahoma and Florida? The Vols respond by going out and making pivotal fourth-quarter plays to come from 21 points back to beat Georgia as well as strip the football from Jerell Adams to hang on against South Carolina.

Rip into the defense for their early-season miscues? That unit carried Tennessee for wide swaths of the comeback against Georgia as well as a narrow loss to Alabama and in several key wins late.

Criticize the offensive ineptitude against North Texas and Missouri? The Vols did what they wanted to at will Saturday night against Vanderbilt, running and throwing the ball all over the field against a team that featured one of the league's top defenses.

Not to mention the Vols have arguably the country's best special teams, and they reminded everybody of that when Cameron Sutton took a punt back 85 yards to the house against the Commodores for UT's sixth return-game touchdown of the season. 

So, what do the Vols think of their coach's statement about being one of the nation's best teams?

"I think he's right," UT junior outside linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin said. "If you look at who we played and how we played them—Iowa's in the playoffs; we had them earlier in the year; we took Bama to the fourth; took Florida to the fourth; took Oklahoma to the fourth, and all those are top teams this year—I think the proof is in the pudding; we can play with anybody.

"If we would have finished those games out earlier, it might have been a different season. But we try not to focus on that, finish with eight wins, and it's the first time we've done that in a long time. Going for No. 9 next."

That record didn't seem feasible when Tennessee began the season 2-3. A demoralizing home loss to what then looked like a bad Arkansas team didn't sit well with anybody. With Georgia and Alabama looming, the Vols had to do something quickly.

That's when perhaps the turning point of the Jones' era didn't even involve the head coach. 

Some of the team leaders got together for a meeting that Sunday following the loss to the Razorbacks. Dobbs, Sutton and left tackle Kyler Kerbyson all pointed to that particular time frame as a turning point of the season.

What transpired was a team learning from its very public mistakes rather than falling victim to them.

"It's no quit in us," Sutton said. "Our hunger grows more week in and week out. Adversity's going to hit a team, and it hit us early. But we put it upon the leaders of this team to step up, embrace it and make a change. We did that and came together.

"I remember we had a Sunday meeting, just the leaders trying to get it turned around, just preaching to younger guys and the rest of the team to have our backs the same way we have theirs. We're in a good position right now and finished the way we wanted to finish."

There's no denying the faults of this year's rendition of the Vols; the early-season miscues and enough near-misses to haunt an offseason's worth of nightmares. Yes, 2015 may wind up going down as one of those "what might have been" seasons because of how the losses transpired.

But these past few games changed the season's narrative. A strong finale in what could wind up being the Outback or Belk Bowl could parlay the good vibes into an offseason full of hype and a '16 UT team that could win an SEC Championship.

An unspoken goal this year was to compete again. Not only did the Vols do that, but they did so to the point that losing a few of those games against really good teams became huge, national-noteworthy disappointments.

Now, more important goals are not only attainable, they're believable. 

The losing chapter of Tennessee's history book is closed. Now, the Vols are going to be measured again not by wins, but by how much they win. The 2015 team elevated expectations, and the Vols punctuated that fact with a season-capping coronation against the Commodores.

"I do think that this is one of the best stories in all of college football, with a young football team coupled with a resilient group of seniors and how far we've come," Jones said. "I'm just proud of them."

The way the Vols pummeled Vanderbilt like in the glory days to cap a breakthrough season, it felt like the Tennessee football program is finally back.

All stats gathered from CFBStats.com unless otherwise noted. All quotes and information gathered firsthand unless otherwise noted. 

Brad Shepard covers SEC football and is the Tennessee lead writer for Bleacher Report. Follow Brad on Twitter @Brad_Shepard.