Advertisement

No. 4 Tennessee's inexperience leads to upset at Arkansas | College Football Power Hour

Yahoo Sports’ Caroline Fenton, Jason Fitz, and Adam Breneman react to the Volunteers' 19-14 loss to the Razorbacks and discuss how Tennessee was exposed. Hear the full conversation on the “College Football Power Hour” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

The really shocking part about Tennessee in this game was just the lack of explosion they had on offense.

It's what they've been so good at under Josh Heel Fitz.

You mentioned the third down situation.

I would argue that 1st and 2nd down for Tennessee is way more important than third down.

How many first downs are you getting on 1st and 2nd down?

I just saw stat that talked about how actually the best teams get those first downs on 1st and 2nd down and stay out of third down altogether.

Tennessee with only 16 1st downs in this game, Arkansas with 23 and then yards per pass for Tennessee 5.4 yards per pass that you should be running the ball for 5.4 yards a rush, not throwing the ball for 5.4.

And, and we've seen Tennessee be way more explosive than this.

So, yes, Tennessee controls their own destiny, but their entire program, their entire winning formula revolves around being explosive on offense, being able to play fast, getting a bunch of points per play and that's not the team we saw against Arkansas.

Yeah, and Niko Yamalo has got to learn from this too.

Like I, I, I'm frustrated with the way this game ended.

I mean, you saw Hypo used a, a time out that I don't think with six seconds left to get them in the right play on fourth down during that time out there has to be communication with the quarterback.

Hey, we don't have a lot of time.

We got to get rid of the ball quickly.

It's got to be on time because you didn't have any time outs left at that point.

And instead of that happening, Nico runs around tries to make something happen.

And then it's almost like he just forgot the situation because he finally, he ran past the line of scrimmage left himself, no choice and runs out of bounds as the clock hits zero.

And it's like you, you just, you can't put yourself in that situation.

He's a young kid playing quarterback.

One of the things we've talked about is eventually he was gonna have a young kid playing quarterback game.

It's just man.

Now all the wiggle room is gone.

You, if you were gonna have that game, I'd rather you had it against one of the best teams that you can learn from.

Instead, you had it against Arkin and it's just this, this takes away some of the shine on a kid that's played really, really well so far this year.

This is a, a welcome to the big leagues kind of moment.

For Niko Alya and it happens for every young quarterback.

I still think that Tennessee is a very, very good and very complete football team.

But I remember we talked about this a few weeks ago and, and you brought up, you know what's Tennessee's weakness because through a few weeks, it didn't look like that Tennessee really had any weaknesses.

And I thought at this point, Tennessee's biggest weakness might just be the lack of experience for their starting quarterback at Adam.

We, we saw that come to fruition here at some point.

The SEC is all going to beat up on each other.

I mean, guys, we only have a few teams that, that have an unbeaten sec record right now.

I mean, Tennessee just lost Alabama and Georgia both have, have SEC losses.

The only ones that don't have a loss are Texas LSU and Texas A and M I believe this will be a fluke and that Tennessee will get back to playing Tennessee football the rest of the season.