FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Tennessee football showed vulnerability on the offensive side of the football against Oklahoma two weeks ago.
The Vols defeated the Sooners, 25-15, but the offense relied on a relaxed game plan that struggled to move the football. After a bye week to restore health, Tennessee (4-1, 1-1 SEC) returned to the gridiron for a road meeting with the Arkansas Razorbacks (4-2, 2-1) at Donald W. Reynolds Stadium.
Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman revealed that he identified Tennessee’s weaknesses against Oklahoma to strategize in his 19-14 win over the Vols.
“They could throw it and their wideouts can run,” Pittman said. “So we watched Oklahoma and they had somewhat success, they held them to 25. And so with all that, did it fit our schematics? But that’s where it started with, was the tape on Oklahoma. Because they’re the only ones that really had done any good at all. The rest of them were in the 50s, 60s, 70s. So we implemented some of that because of that.”
At some points in the game, the Hogs dropped into a 3-2-6 look on defense. It was a defensive lineup that Tennessee struggled with against the Sooners, so Pittman was inclined to give Nico Iamaleava the same challenges that were presented on film.
Iamaleava finished the game 16-of-28 for 156 yards and no scores. On the final drive, the redshirt sophomore fired a 42-yard bullet while rolling to his left to Dont’e Thornton Jr., setting the Vols up at the Arkansas 25 yard line. Despite having 22 seconds to work with and two timeouts, Iamaleava was unable to find the endzone.
On the last play of the game, Iamaleava ran out of bounds with the clock expiring — handing the Hogs a 19-14 win over a top-five opponent, ensuing chaos with a field storming.
“Honestly, I was thinking, ‘Hey, no penalties in the end zone,’ to be honest with you,” Pittman said. “But then whenever he got flushed and he couldn’t find anybody, Nico finally tucked the ball to run and I was looking to see if he got the first down and he did. But the clock ran out.
“So I was just thinking all that stuff and all those things. And when it was over, I was thinking about how proud that the state of Arkansas is for their football team and that’s the only damn reason, well it’s not the reason I took the job, but that’s one of the top reasons that I came here, I wanted to try to make the state proud of the team.”
Tennessee managed 332 total yards of offense but mustered 14 points to show for it. The passing game was a struggle, and Iamaleava would have barely surpassed the 100-yard mark if it weren’t for his deep ball to Thornton on the final drive.
“I think we ran something that they had not seen us run, first of all,” Pittman said. “Second of all, we ran it real well. We weren’t going let them get behind us if we could help.
“And we were really worried about stopping the run, but we always had the edge covered because we were bringing corners off a read run. And we were bringing the field linebacker off a read run. And we mixed it up, so we had a little bit of the odd front and then a little bit of the four-man and mixed it up. We brought total-zero blitz heat. I just thought Travis did a wonderful job of calling the defensive game. And more important, getting the kids to believe in what we were going to try to do to stop this very, very, very high-powered offense.”
Tennessee failed to silence a crowd of 75,573 people. Through Pittman’s revised game plan, Arkansas came out as the better team on Saturday night. The Vols dropped their first game since November 2023, ending a six-game winning streak.
Tennessee will have a chance to bounce back, welcoming Florida to a hostile Neyland Stadium on Oct. 12.
