Even before they saw the looks on each other’s faces, they saw the looks on film.
Months before tapping into the vim and vigor that would help them topple Tennessee in a shocking Week 1, 38-30 upset, Georgia State football coaches saw the blueprint that would help them win.
These were not the Volunteers of old, they saw. Peyton Manning wasn’t going to run onto that field come the end of August. There was a win somewhere in that film — that much was obvious to coach Shawn Elliott. Georgia State just had to find the right gameplan.
They would unfurl it over the course of months, using little motivations along the way to stir something in the Panthers’ souls. They saw it right there on film, and film doesn’t lie, they told the players and young coaches.
One day, weeks before the Aug. 31 matchup, a graduate assistant poked his head into Elliott’s office and said to the head coach, “Buddy, I just want you to know we’re fixin’ to beat Tennessee.”
“I know who said it, I remember what day,” said Elliott, whose team faces Wyoming in the Arizona Bowl on Tuesday. “I just said, ‘I know we are!’”
It’s not that Georgia State’s coaches were soothsayers. They didn’t read palms. They weren’t hoping.
What they saw on film weren’t flashes of the future, it was the reality of the present: Tennessee was beatable, a shell of their once-formidable former selves coming off a 5-7 campaign under first-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt.
“When we scheduled the game, it was like, ‘Perfect. This is a perfect opponent for us,’” Elliott said. “They’ve been through some tough times. It wasn’t like we were going to play ’Bama. I knew they’d had some ups and downs and some question marks. They didn’t know if they were any good or not.”
They saw on film a defense that had allowed 154 rushing yards per game and was bringing back just two of their top five tacklers from a 5-7 team. They saw a UT offense that ranked 96th in passing, 111th in rushing and 108th in scoring in 2018.
They found weaknesses in the Volunteers where they were strong themselves. UT’s defensive line versus the Panthers’ offensive line. Georgia State’s defensive front against a lacking Volunteer offense.
The Panthers knew what the rest of the world didn’t. The rest of the world saw a 2-10 team heading to play in front of 100,000 fans in raucous Knoxville, a team that had been 0-10 against Power 5 opponents.
The Panthers knew they had the right mix of returning leadership — particularly at quarterback with senior Dan Ellington and on the offensive line, which returned almost entirely intact — and the right mindset going in.
Throughout camp, there had been dual preparation, half focused on the full season installation and half focused just on Tennessee. They intended to send a message.
“The architecture of it, we were building this team for that day,” Elliott said. “Of course, we’re planning for the season, but really we were laying down this game plan every time we stepped on the field. We kept saying, ‘How many people are going to be watching this upset?’”
“Sometimes you throw out some chicken feed as a coach. I was feeding them something every day.”
It worked.
“We had a chip on our shoulders,” running back Tra Barnett said. “Tennessee this, Tennessee that. Even our peers, even on our own campus, doubted us. We bleed just like they bleed. We had to show these people we deserved to be here.”
Georgia State head coach Shawn Elliott, left, is congratulated by Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt after a win an NCAA college football game Saturday, Aug. 31, 2019, in Knoxville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne)
By game week, the Panthers were locked in. There were looks all over the team. This wasn’t going to be a fluke. This wasn’t going to take razzle-dazzle. This wouldn’t come down to the last minute.
“We had that look,” Barnett said. “It was like, man lets go. We had a certain type of hunger. Coming off 2-10, we felt like we had so much to prove. There was like a 2% chance of us winning. This was the perfect time, 100,000 people, show the world, show the people we can play with the best of the best. Some of us didn’t have SEC offers. We wanted to show them, ‘Y’all forgot about us.’”
On Aug. 31, the Panthers made everyone remember.
They held Tennessee to 93 rushing yards that day, stuffing Tennessee quarterback Jarrett Guarantano to minus-10 yards on 10 carries. The Panthers rushed for 213 yards, including 95 and a score for Barnett and 61 and a score for Ellington, who also threw for 139 yards and two touchdowns.
Trailing 23-21 with nine minutes left in the game, Georgia State scored 17 straight points in front of a stunned Tennessee crowd.
“We just believed all spring, all summer, all camp that we were going to beat those guys,” Ellington said. “The night before the game, there was a different look in our eyes. The guys were focused. We were plugged in. I knew when I left that locker room we had a good chance at winning that game.”
Months before, after the team’s spring game, Ellington told members of the media that the team was going to pull out the win.
“I’ve been around a lot of upsets,” Elliott said. “The first thing you have to do is explain what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. We just pinpointed certain things we thought we were better at. We preached it to our guys, and they believed in it.”
Asked when he knew his team would beat Tennessee, at Tennessee?
Elliott simply said, “The day we scheduled them.”
