FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — There was no way of knowing what Tennessee football’s offense had in the tank ahead of its 19-14 loss at Arkansas on Saturday night.
In the Vols’ 4-0 start to open the season, Tennessee heavily leaned on its run game and didn’t have to do much in the pass game to coast to victories.
But Arkansas did what Tennessee’s first four opponents couldn’t, forcing Tennessee to throw the ball successfully to have offensive success. The results? Yikes.
Nico Iamaleava completed 16-of-28 passes for 156 yards with 42 yards coming on a broken play on its final drive of the night.
The lack of passing success certainly didn’t fall squarely on the young quarterback’s shoulders. His offensive line made his life difficult with Arkansas sacking Iamaleava four times and sending him on the run a number of other times.
Tennessee also didn’t have receivers running open. Iamaleava overshot Squirrel White on a deep ball in the fourth quarter. But besides that, there were no glaring misses even sitting in the press box with the benefit of seeing the all 22 in live time.
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All this lends to an important question. Are Tennessee’s offensive issues fixable?
Tennessee will almost certainly be better offensively. I’m low on Tennessee’s offensive line but I believe they’ll play better than they did in the first half. Arkansas has a stout run defense and Tennessee should be able to sustain rushing success against most of its opponents this season.
Josh Heupel called one of his worst games in his four years as Tennessee’s head coach. That is unlikely to continue moving forward. The Vols are also unlikely to commit 60 offensive penalty yards in games moving forward.
There’s also the general regression to the mean coming. Things are never as good or as bad as they look. Tennessee’s offense played a bad game at Arkansas. They will certainly clear the extremely low bar they set against Arkansas moving forward.
But there’s a troubling combination for Tennessee. Its offensive line is shaky, particularly in pass protection. Its receivers are average just like they were a season ago. And while Iamaleava is very talented he’s not good enough yet to carry the offense around him.
That combination is an issue for Tennessee. While I’m confident that the Vols offense will be better than they were against Arkansas, I’m not sure the root causes of the offensive shortcomings are fixable.
