Tennessee defensive backs coach Willie Martinez met with the media in Knoxville on Tuesday and addressed some of the breakdowns that his unit saw against Arkansas’s passing game on Saturday night.
While the Vols hadn’t let up more than 200 passing yards through the first four games of the season, Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green found success moving the ball through the air against the Tennessee defense. All in all, Arkansas finished the game with 297 passing yards, a new season-high allowed for the Vols’ defense in that metric.
Arkansas hit 10 passing plays of 15+ yards against Tennessee’s defense on Saturday with at least one explosive play through the air in all four quarters. The Razorback hit passes of 23, 16, and 19 in the first, 26 in the second, 15, 26, 17, 22, and 30 in the third, and an 18-yard completion in the fourth. Those 10 explosive plays accounted for more than 70 percent of Arkansas’s passing yards.
You have to give credit to Arkansas’s Taylen Green on several of those plays, such as his 26-yard and 30-yard completions to WR Andrew Armstrong, who made terrific plays despite Tennessee cornerback Jermod McCoy being in good coverage. But Martinez also saw areas for improvement as Tennessee gets back to their SEC schedule ahead.
“Yeah, you might be talking about zone coverages and stuff like that,” Martinez said after being asked about some of Arkansas’s big plays through the air on Tuesday. “And there was. We’ve got to do a better job of tackling. That’s the first thing that shows up when you’re playing on the perimeter and you have to be really good against offenses. It doesn’t matter what the offense is. We got to be elite at the perimeter game. Whether that’s screens or whether a guy catches a ball. The yards cannot be after the catch. That’s what you’re trying to minimize. The yards after the catch. They caught some balls, obviously in one-on-one situations we didn’t win some. We didn’t win the one-on-ones that we’ve been winning. Again, that just comes from play-making, that comes from fundamentals and technique. Not to take anything away from, like you just said, Arkansas is a good football team and they deserved to win. I mean, we got to play better, you know, on our end of it, we feel like there’s a lot of stuff there that was us too. We weren’t the smartest on certain plays. We weren’t as physical as we needed to be. We missed the tackle and we shouldn’t have missed the tackle that created a momentum change. We missed an assignment as a defense in a crucial moment on third down that allowed them to change the field on us. Man, we want to be a dominant defense. We want to be a lead defense. We want to keep the field position when we have the field position. I mean, offenses are going to make plays. We want to be in tight coverage. We just got to play smarter. We got to play harder and longer in moments, especially back at the end of the game.”
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Something that’s been talked about a lot on Monday and Tuesday from Tennessee players and coaches is being able to quickly learn from the loss but also being able to “flush it” so that Arkansas can’t beat Tennessee again when they host the Gators in Neyland Stadium this Saturday night.
Martinez explained what the term “flush it” means to him and how he has seen his unit enact that this week as the Vols return to the practice field.
“It’s really the next play is the most important play,” Martinez said. “It is the next play. And whether you’re using that as an example of just, flush it, man. We’re onto the next play. It’s really how we see it. That’s how I see it. You’re only as good as obviously the next one, really, to be honest with you. We already know what the results are. We’re moving forward. We want to get this bad taste in our mouths. And we’re just moving on. Because obviously we got a great opponent in Florida and they have a lot of really good players. This is a great league. It’s the best league in the country. The next team is the most important team, you know, the next play. So that’s how they look at it.”
Tennessee’s secondary performed well through the first four games but the knock was that the Vols’ still hadn’t faced a team that could truly test them through the air. NC State was thought to be that test originally but the Wolfpack’s season hasn’t been nearly as productive as expected since the Tennessee blowout. Oklahoma was then the first true test, which in some ways Tennessee passed with flying colors as Oklahoma bench their starting quarterback before halftime, but backup Michael Hawkins did record 132 passing yards in just over two quarters.
Arkansas provided Tennessee with their toughest challenge yet as quarterback Taylen Green used his mobility and accuracy to throw for 266 yards before being injured.
As Martinez stated, Tennessee will have a chance to bounce back this week against Florida’s offense featuring a two-quarterback system with veteran Graham Mertz and freshman DJ Lagway.
Martinez, though, is pleased with how Tennessee has responded this week as his unit prepares for the Gators’ offense.
“We had a great practice today,” Martinez said. “Boy, I tell you, I think as a team we did. But also the communication was really good. And it really starts with them (the STAR position) because they set the calls and it is getting better. It’s only, the experience, obviously you can only get it when you’re playing. So they’re gaining the confidence.”
Check out Willie Martinez’s full Tuesday press conference below:
