Tennessee Overcome Sluggish Start and Quarterback Injury to Beat Texas A&M and Keep Playoff Hopes Alive
The Tennessee Volunteers beat the Texas A&M Aggies on the road in College Station to keep their College Football Playoff (CFP) hopes alive, overcoming a sluggish first half and an injury to their starting quarterback.
The trip itself had been disrupted. After an FAA ground stop delayed their travel, Tennessee did not reach the team hotel until just before 1 a.m. local time. Coach Josh Heupel is unlikely to admit it, but that late arrival may explain the sleepy start on offense.
It was a repeat of the previous week. Seven days earlier, Tennessee had needed a fourth-quarter explosion to put the Kentucky Wildcats away, and history repeated itself in College Station.
While the offense struggled, Tennessee's defense held the game together, harassing Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed all afternoon and holding him to just 71 yards passing.
Texas A&M could muster only one touchdown the entire game and were held to just 179 total yards.
It has been a hard fall for Texas A&M, who began the season as a top-10 team before falling out of the AP top 25 entirely. Saturday's loss leaves the Aggies in danger of missing a bowl game, and they still have a showdown with a surging Texas squad to end the season.
For Tennessee, a letdown would almost surely have meant the end of their CFP aspirations, as a third loss could have put those dreams on life support.
Things looked bleaker midway through the third quarter, when starting quarterback George MacIntyre went out with an injury.
From that point, Tennessee remembered they could run the ball, rushing for 196 yards on the day and holding the ball for over 42 minutes.
If Tennessee can replicate this formula of strong defense and controlling the time of possession, they will be a hard out in December and beyond. They face the LSU Tigers next Saturday before a road game in Nashville against rival Vanderbilt, and navigating that stretch undefeated would make them a shoo-in for the CFP.
