Georgia Tech had Tennessee on the ropes for one quarter. That's the entire window Yellow Jacket fans get to feel good about this one.
A blocked-punt return for a touchdown, Georgia Tech's first in more than two decades, gave the home crowd at Bobby Dodd Stadium a sold-out reason to believe in an upset. Tech led 10-7 after the first quarter. Then Tennessee scored 17 straight points in the first 11 minutes of the second quarter, and the game was essentially over before halftime.
What matters more than the final score is how a true freshman quarterback, making his first true road start, answered adversity by doing nothing flashy at all. Faizon Brandon went 10-of-21 for 148 yards and two touchdowns, no interceptions, and added some yards on the ground. It's a poised stat line more than a gaudy one. He found Ethan Davis for a 25-yard score and Braylon Staley for a 20-yarder, and in a building that had just gone electric off a blocked punt, he didn't try to answer with a hero throw. He managed the game and let the rest of the team win it.
And the rest of the roster showed up. DeSean Bishop carried the load with a career-high rushing performance and two touchdowns, both his first of the season, on his way to Tennessee running for nearly 300 yards as a team at better than six and a half yards a carry. When your run game is moving like that, you don't need your true freshman to force anything. That's a luxury a lot of first-year starters don't get.
The defense turned this from a competitive game into a rout. Dejuan Lane's interception return for a touchdown put Tennessee ahead for good, and Jeremiah Telander added a second pick of Georgia Tech's Alberto Mendoza before the half. Throw in four sacks, and Mendoza's 221 yards on 40 attempts starts to look like a quarterback under siege for most of the night, even if the raw completion number looks respectable on paper.
Two games into the season, both teams are still finding their footing, and Georgia Tech is still working through the fallout of an opening upset loss to Colorado. Neither program has faced a real test yet, but the headline out of Atlanta has little to do with the scoreline. Tennessee's true freshman quarterback took a hostile road environment, a punt-return touchdown, and an early deficit, and didn't do anything to lose the game. For a first true road start, that's about as good an outcome as a coaching staff could ask for.
