ATLANTA -- Even among second-tier teams, the SEC
leads the competition.
The
Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game pitting Tennessee against N.C. State
illustrated that fact with perfect clarity.
The Vols won 35 to 21 but it could have been a lot worse.
Tennessee put up 22 points in the first quarter, 16 of those coming in
three consecutive plays that took 27 seconds. The defense scored the
first safety of the 2012 college season, and Tyler Bray looked like a
first-team All American, pitching and catching with Justin Hunter,
Cordarrelle Patterson and Zach Rogers for 333 yards.
Patterson, a juco transfer playing his first game as a Vol,
scampered for 67 yards on a reverse for one Tennessee touchdown and
caught a 41-yard bullet from Bray for another. Then Rogers caught a bomb
for 71 yards and a score.
The Wolfpack
scraped and clawed to keep it close, but the size of the Tennessee
linemen proved too much in the end. Volunteer nose tackle
Daniel McCullers, at 6'6" 377 pounds, is just slightly smaller than the
Kia Sol sponsors gave away to a fan in the fourth quarter. He and the
other linemen and linebackers kept pounding away, eventually creating
four turnovers.
"I've
always said that the difference between winning and losing is turnover
ratio and big plays and we had both," Tennessee coach Derek Dooley
said.
But as good as Tennessee looked – and
viewed in the vacuum of this game, they looked awfully good – they are
still, at best a second-, third-, or fourth-place team in the SEC.
In fact, neither the Vols nor the Wolfpack
is expected to win their conference. N.C. State should, charitably,
finish behind Florida State, Clemson, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech in
the ACC, while the Vols would be thrilled to be mentioned the same
sentence with Alabama and LSU.
And therein
lies the rub for teams like Tennessee as well as those from other
conferences who play them.
With the
offensive weapons they have and the size and speed of their linemen, the
Vols, like many down-ticket SEC teams, could contend for a title in
most conferences, at least until late in the season.
In the SEC, they are many more wins away from entering the
conversation.
As for teams from other
conferences, the problem is obvious: the best in the SEC is the best in
the country, but the second-tier teams are no slouches. That doesn't get
showcased often enough as Georgia and Florida schedule Buffalo and
Bowling Green for their openers. Alabama is the lone exception, opening
with a ranked team almost every year and taking on No. 8 Michigan on
Saturday.
Tennessee is an example of a
solid team that would win somewhere between nine and 11 games in a
conference other than the SEC. With Bray and his big, fast receiving
corps reeled off 80 offensive plays for 524 total yards. This without
last year's leading receiver Da'Rick Rogers.
"If they'd had that kid, holy cow, that would have been some
weapons," N.C. State coach Tom O'Brien said.
But Dooley knows where he stands in his own league. He
articulates it in his own imitable way, but he
knows.
"This is one game, one," he said,
raising a single finger to make the point. "We are 1-0 and made a lot of
mistakes. We had third-and-one and fourth-and-one and we
didn't convert.
"I already know that you
guys are going to say ‘We're there, we're on our way,'" Dooley said.
"All that matters is that we are 1-0 and we have to clean up a ton of
mistakes and get ready for the next opponent. We're not going to sit
here and pat ourselves on the back. It was a good win, but we've got 11
more and a lot of things to work on."
The
Vols have their Buffalo next week when they play Georgia State
University, a team still in its infancy formed and coached by Bill
Curry. By all rights they should be 2-0 before hosting
Florida.
After that, the weeks get long and
grueling.
But as Dooley said, "We're
happy to have a win. That is a good N.C. State team."
O'Brien, for all his disappointment at leaving
Atlanta 0-1, would have agreed with that
assessment.
"We just didn't play good
enough," the Wolfpack coach
said.
Unfortunately, when playing against
the SEC, very few do.
