Photos: Tennessee Athletics
Texas 20 Tennessee 17. The defense did its job. The offense and especially that offensive line did not.
Let’s start with the side that showed up in a big way. Jim Knowles’ defense played a No. 1 team for four quarters and never let the thing get away. Texas finished with 262 yards. Arch Manning threw for 201, no touchdowns, and an interception, and he spent a chunk of the day on the ground. Six sacks. Raleek Brown got his two short scores and 67 yards, and that was about the whole Texas highlight reel. Twenty points in Neyland against that roster is a defensive performance this program has not had in a long time. Last year’s group does not keep this game close. This one did. If you wanted proof the defense has actually changed, you got it with the whole country watching. They went above and beyond. The Jim Knowles hire easily looks like the best off season move in a long time here. That unit deserved a win.
Then you look at the other side of the ball in this game and it makes you sick.
Ten sacks given up. Let me say that again, TEN sacks. 221 total yards. That is the lowest yardage total of the Josh Heupel era, and it came against the first real defense on the schedule. DeSean Bishop and Daune Morris never got a crease. The run game was stuck around 70 yards because the line could not move anybody. Colin Simmons had five sacks by himself and spent the afternoon owning the edge and terrorizing Brandon. Wendell Moi got hurt early and the next guys in did not change the picture. Faizon Brandon was running for his life from the first series to the last. 17-29 for 145 yards and a big chunk of that came on the one drive at the end when the game was already slipping away.
Do not try and tell me this came out of nowhere. The O line tape was already bad. The offensive line looked shaky against teams that were not anywhere near this level, and a lot of people wanted to believe it was just the early season film lying to us. Since the scoreboard was always in our favor there must not be a real issue. Turns out the tape was not lying. Bad teams let them get away with it. Texas did not. Saturday was the receipt.
The creativity Heupel made his name on looked gone, too. Inside runs. Hitch routes. One mid screen that went for about 15 yards, and that felt like the only time all day the offense did something other than line up and hope. Maybe there was more drawn up. Maybe those plays never had a chance because the line could not let them develop. Who knows. What I know is what showed up on the field, and it did not look like the offense that used to stress people sideways and down the field. It looked stuck. It looked generic. It looked like we weren’t going to try anything out of the box.
Here is the part that really gets me. You are giving up sacks and hurries in bunches, your quarterback is a freshman, and you keep sitting him in the pocket anyway. Roll the kid out. Let him be the athlete he is. Give him easier reads and a half second where somebody is not in his lap. That is not some secret. That is the adjustment you make when the line is getting destroyed and the quarterback is young. They never made it. They just kept asking him to stand in there and take it.
Yes, he held the ball too long at times. He pulled the string on some throws. Heupel even said he did not get rid of it when he needed to. But expecting a freshman who is getting hit on almost every drop back to stay calm, see the field, and throw it on time with accuracy is not realistic. That is a veteran ask. Some of the best NFL quarterbacks to ever play the game look very average or even bad when they face relentless pressure every time they drop back. Brandon is not a veteran. He is not a seasoned NFL quarterback. He was playing high school football less than a year ago. He is an 18 year old taking a beating because the five guys in front of him could not block, and because the staff never found an answer once it was obvious they could not block. You can note the poor performance. You do not hang the loss on him.
He did not turn it over, and he still found Mike Matthews for 30 yards to make it 20 to 17 with the building believing again. That late drive does not wash the first three and a half quarters. One touchdown throw, a field goal, and a punt return from Qua Moss. That is the offense’s day against the No. 1 team in the country. Arion Carter gave them one more breath with the onside kick, and the last throw got knocked down. You can live with that ending. You cannot live with how they got there.
You really cannot live with what they did after they got the onside kick back. Arion Carter just stole them another possession with a minute left, and the offense turned it into a comedy show that was not funny at all. Penalties. Clock runoffs. A 4 yard catch in bounds that let the clock bleed down to nothing. Nobody getting to the line and spiking it so you still have a real shot at a Hail Mary. They had the ball, they had the crowd, and they spent the last minute looking like they had never practiced the situation. The last throw to the end zone was just the ending of a drive that was already wasted.
The defense played amazing. They changed what this team can be on that side of the ball, and they nearly stole a win the offense had no business being in. The line and the offensive staff put together an all time bad performance. Not a rough day. An all time bad one.
The schedule gets easier for a couple weeks now. Auburn comes to Neyland, then a trip to Arkansas, before Alabama shows up. On paper that is a breather after No. 1 Texas. With this offensive line, there will not be anything easy about those games anymore.