UT Vols football left wrestling with legacy as first eight-loss team in program history

Tell Colton Jumper four months ago that this was how Tennessee’s season would turn out and the senior linebacker wouldn’t have believed it.

The same is true for sophomore wide receiver Brandon Johnson and surely holds true for their 100-plus Tennessee teammates left wrestling with a reality that was far from what they expected in the 2017 season.

The Volunteers went 4-8, making them the first Tennessee football team with eight losses in a single season.

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“It’s pretty hard. It’s pretty bad. It’s not something you want to be part of,” Johnson said.

This Tennessee team’s fate as the first to lose eight games — all in SEC play — was cemented Saturday at Neyland Stadium in a 42-24 loss to Vanderbilt (5-7, 1-7 SEC). But the spot as one of the worst teams in Tennessee history already was in place, as each week and each loss brought with it the knowledge that it was going to be worse before it was better.

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The offense was abysmal, averaging less than 20 points. The defense couldn’t stop the run, ranking as the worst unit in the SEC. There was a rash of injuries, especially on the offensive line and at quarterback. Butch Jones was dismissed on Nov. 12 after a shellacking at Missouri a day earlier and before the end of his fifth season.

Asked about the run defense against Vanderbilt, Jumper likened it to the way the season went: “The cracks began to show, and then those floodgates opened.”

“There’s way too many factors to actually pinpoint one,” Johnson said of what went wrong for the Vols. “There’s a lot going on. We are just using it as motivation for next year.”

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With the way the Vols spoke Saturday, it was clear next year cannot get here soon enough to wipe away the feeling of the worst season in Tennessee history.

“In terms of this team, everything that we experienced, it’s gone,” freshman offensive lineman Trey Smith said. “The only thing we can control is what we do every day for preparation for next season.”

Redshirt freshman quarterback Jarrett Guarantano summed up the eight-loss season as having a feeling that “wasn’t fun to be around all-around” within an hour of it being mercifully over. And it all snowballed to an ending that was a drastic fall for a team that Jumper felt had a lot of momentum in August after back-to-back nine-win seasons.

Now, it’s a team and a program left waiting for a new coach and new coaching staff to be brought on to change the trajectory after the first eight-loss season in the program’s 121 years.

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But while that happens — and until the Vols take the field in Charlotte against West Virginia on Sept. 1 — the 2017 Vols are left bearing the unfortunate mark of being on the wrong side of Tennessee football history.

“It feels terrible,” Guarantano said. “We are going to let it feel terrible. We are going to let it feel terrible every single practice and workout going forward.”