Tennessee scored in the first half in each of Josh Heupel’s first 43 games as head coach. For the first 26 games, the Vols were consistently one of the best first quarter offenses in the country. But in each of the last two games, Tennessee’s offense has been scoreless through 30 minutes.
Through three SEC games, an offense that once totaled 400 yards at a minimum in nearly every game has failed to total 350 yards.
There’s no shortage of blame to go around but any conversation about an offense starts with the quarterback play and redshirt freshman Nico Iamaleava simply is not performing well enough right now. He’ll be the first one to tell you.
“First drive, we come out and have a good drive and we fumble the ball, on me,” Iamaleava said following Tennessee’s 23-17 win over Florida on Saturday night. “I have to be better with the handoff. Our defense gets a strip on the goal line and I come out and throw a pick into double coverage. Stuff like that, I have to be better.”
But the two turnovers weren’t Iamaleava’s only miscues. He overshot an open Squirrel White on what would have been a touchdown in the second quarter. Two plays later, Iamaleava and Nimrod weren’t on the same page on a deep ball that could have been a chunk play.
Those plays were mostly on Iamaleava, but he threw a beautiful deep ball later in the game to Nimrod but the receiver tracked it poorly and couldn’t haul it in. On the Vols’ final drive of regulation, Iamaleava and Nimrod couldn’t connect on what would have been a big play over the middle.
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If there’s any positive from another bad Tennessee offensive performance it’s that they were close to a number of big plays. That wasn’t the case a week ago at Arkansas. But at the end of the day, there’s no real consolation in that facts.
“I don’t think we’re far off, you know what I mean?” Heupel said postgame. “But it’s not just the pass game, it’s the run game too. Missed assignments, fundamentals, technique. Like it’s guys open, we don’t hit it. Guys open, we’re getting pressured. It’s everybody taking their turn and at some point we got to say we’re going to man up and do our job and make this thing go the way that it’s capable of.”
Iamaleava noted that it is “very” difficult not to be frustrated by the offensive issues. And Heupel sounded as frustrated as he ever has while giving that answer.
The offensive line continues to be abysmal in pass protection and was bad in the run game against Florida. Tennessee held three times and Iamaleava was sacked three more. Multiple times in the last two weeks, Tennessee’s gotten some offensive momentum only to be trounced by a sack or holding.
“We just keep shooting ourselves in the foot, man,” Iamaleava said. “Lot of penalties out there when we’d have a big play— we’d be right back and starting off in first-and-20. We just haven’t been helping ourselves out with the penalties. … We all have to operate better, at a higher level.”
Tennessee’s 5-1 (2-1 SEC) with all of its goals out in front of them. But its offensive deficiencies are holding back an elite defense. Entering the Third Saturday in October, the frustration is evident.
