Phillip Fulmer headed for field level at TIAA Bank Field with roughly eight minutes left in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl on Jan. 2 in Jacksonville.
Tennessee’s athletic director wasn’t in a particularly good mood as the Vols trailed Indiana 22-9 after a frustrating 50 minutes of football.
“I was P.O.’d, now,” Fulmer said Tuesday on Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone. “I’m telling you, I came down that elevator and I was thinking this is not going to be fun.”
It got a lot more fun when he reached the sideline.
Quavaris Crouch scored on a 1-yard touchdown plunge with 4:21 left, capping a 10-play, 82-yard drive to make it a one-possession game. After recovering an onside kick — one that Indiana wasn’t expecting — it was Eric Gray rushing 16 yards for the go-ahead score, as the Vols went 54 yards in three plays to make it 23-22 with 3:51 left.
“And it’s just right in front of your eyes,” Fulmer said of the improbable comeback.
It might not have been in front of his eyes back during his days as a head coach. Fulmer was quick to admit that the surprise onside kick was a big gamble with an even bigger payoff.
“You’re talking about gutsy, to kick that onside kick,” Fulmer said. “As a head coach, I don’t know that I could’ve gotten that out of my mouth. But (Pruitt) was very confident in it. I think that tells you a lot about our coach.
“He’s close to the kids, he’s very demanding, they’ve responded really well to him. And he’s darn good. He’s a workaholic. All those things are what it takes to be successful.”
The late-game dramatics in Jacksonville helped Tennessee win its sixth straight game to end the season.
The Vols reeled off seven wins over their last eight games after starting 1-4, including back-to-back home losses to Georgia State and BYU to open the season.
If anything, the Gator Bowl was a microcosm of the season as a whole. A slow, frustrating start followed by a fast, exciting finish.
“It’s obviously we came out of it in a good place, where we did,” Fulmer said of the eight-win season. “But it’s really a tale of two seasons, honestly.”
And the overriding lesson was avoiding the first part, when Fulmer and everyone else inside the Tennessee football program was “P.O.’d,” as he described himself in Jacksonville.
“We look at the beginning of the season, just to learn from it,” he said. “How do we not ever get there again? What do we have to do differently in our preparation and our recruiting not to have that? Because it’s not like Oklahoma and Georgia beat you. It was two teams that, at least one of the two at the time, we should’ve beaten handedly probably.
"But we turned the ball over five times, you have three bad penalties, three sacks, you know. It wasn’t like they were tipped balls, either. They were bad plays. It was more than our defense could handle, particularly with a couple guys that were out.
“So you fight through that,” Fulmer continued, “and it was the most incredible journey from that point on, watching Coach Pruitt hold that group of kids and staff — the staff did a great job helping hold that team together. Fighting to get to the place that we got to.”
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Phillip Fulmer was 'P.O.'d' before Vols rallied in Gator Bowl - 247Sports
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