Tennessee football’s 19-14 loss at Arkansas on Saturday night was one of the worst of Josh Heupel’s four seasons as head coach. The Vols’ offense struggled badly in the loss and Heupel nor offensive coordinator Joey Halzle had any answers.
Heupel made plenty of mistakes in the loss but there was one in particular that he said he would like to have back following the game.
Tennessee didn’t take a timeout after Nico Iamaleava connected with Dont’e Thornton for a 42-yard completion during its two-minute drive. The Vols were slow to snap the ball on the ensuing play and 16 seconds ran off the clock from the time the Arkansas defender tackled Thornton and Iamaleava snapped the ball for the next play.
“In hindsight, yep, for sure,” Heupel said of if he wishes he would have taken a timeout. “As I recognized that we weren’t immediately ready thought about going to timeout then I thought we were ready to get the ball off in the next couple seconds and every timeout at the end of the game creates a different scenario where you’re not pushing the ball into the end zone, forced to push the ball into the end zone. So yeah, absolutely.”
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Tennessee had two timeouts at the time and ended up not calling any to stop the clock. They took one ahead of the fourth-and-five play at the 20-yard line that proved to be the final one in the game but the Vols didn’t use their final timeout.
The Vols clock management was poor on the final drive of the game. Despite getting the ball back with two timeouts and 1:17 on the clock, Tennessee only got seven plays off by the end of the game. The worst stretch came when they rank just three plays in a 49 second stretch.
Iamaleava scrambled for eight yards on the first play of the stretch before connecting with Thornton on the next play and throwing an incomplete pass on the following play.
Tennessee is now 4-1 (1-1 SEC) following its loss at Arkansas. They return to the field this week when they face Florida at Neyland Stadium. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. ET. Bob Wischusen, Louis Riddick and Kris Budden are on the call for ESPN.
