Tennessee had a horrible showing against Florida on Saturday, there’s just no other way to put it.

In their first SEC game of the season, the Vols turned the ball over six times and allowed 387 total yards on defense. The 47-21 rout was demoralizing for several reasons, but the season is still young, and you can’t always base everything you know about a team off of their first conference game. At least that’s what Tennessee’s co-defensive coordinator Chris Rumph thinks.

During an appearance Monday at the Knoxville Quarterback Club, Rumph found an interesting way to describe Tennessee’s football program after getting blown out at the hands of the Gators.

“It’s an ugly baby right now,” Rumph said via the Knox News Sentinel. “But we’ve got to take that baby home, all right. We’ve got to take that baby home, and guess what? We’ve got to nurture it. We’ve got to support it. We’ve got to discipline it. We’ve got to teach it.”

“We’ve got to put all those things together. But one day – hopefully sooner than later based on growing up – it’s going to be everything we want it to be. This program is going to be the program that it once was.”

That’s definitely an interesting way to put it, but at least the “baby” part rings true.

This Tennessee team is a young squad led by a first-year head coach. You’d be crazy not to expect a team in this situation to take its fair share of beatings.

Saturday night’s outcome didn’t change the goal of this coaching staff, which is to get Tennessee football back to a point where fans can be proud of the team they support.

“I wish I could say we’re going to win the rest of them,” Rumph said. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But I promise you, before long, we’re going to put a product out there on the field that you’re going to be really proud of. And when we sing ‘Rocky Top,’ we’re going to sing it from the bottom of our stomach to the top of our lungs.”