University of Tennessee Athletics
A Season Of One
October 06, 2014 | Football
By Brian Rice
UTSports.com
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The message from Butch Jones was clear on Monday afternoon. The result from this past weekend cannot define the season as a whole.
In a 12-game schedule, each game has to be a new season, and that is the attitude his team will carry to Saturday as the Volunteers prepare to host Chattanooga at Neyland Stadium.
"Mission remains the same," Jones said in his weekly media briefing. "We talk about being relentless, we are not going away. It is just one game. In this conference and in college football, every game, every week is a new season in and of itself. We have to keep pressing along."
The feeling after Florida was different than after the first two losses of the season. Tennessee entered road games at Oklahoma and Georgia as a heavy underdog. The sting of the home loss was intensified by the chances that were missed, particularly on the offensive side of the football.
Jones sees that sting and disappointment as another teaching moment, one that will show where the team has made progress.
"For us, how do we respond, what is our leadership like?" Jones said. "First time this team has really suffered some adversity and some noise and some clutter. How do we respond?"
The offensive struggles were on full display in the red zone. Tennessee had the ball inside the Florida 20-yard line on four occasions, and scored on three of those opportunities. But all three scores were field goals while the fourth possession ended with an interception in the end zone.
"It is magnified in the red zone because your throwing lanes shrink, your timing shrinks, your landmarks shrink, the timing mechanism is all sped up the closer you get to the goal line," Jones said. You can't have tackles for loss, you can't have untimely penalties and all those things are critical to winning in the red zone."
Jones said he did not want to take away from the 3-3 performance from Aaron Medley on field goal attempts, but he was looking for more point production when field position was in his team's favor.
"Aaron Medley is doing a great job," Jones said. "He is kicking the ball well for us. So again, we have three points in our back pocket, but obviously we need to come away with seven."
Tennessee has to do that with a talented team coming in on Saturday. The Mocs are ranked No. 14 in the FCS poll and are coming off a 55-7 win over VMI in Chattanooga. As the Vols prep for Chattanooga, the focus will continue to turn inward, evaluating what areas are progressing and turning around areas that are not.
"We have to work to continue to correct our deficiencies, we have to have some individuals set up," said Jones. "Through five games now I continue to see individuals get progressively better and I see some players digressing. We have to all ask the question why? We have to go back, we have to work on our fundamentals, our technique, our toughness and just continue to focus on that process and work to be a better football team week in and week out."
