‘I feel like we’d still be out there playing’ – Arkansas HC Bobby Petrino says he made a big mistake in loss to Tennessee
Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Bobby Petrino says he made a big mistake in his team’s 34-31 loss to the Tennessee Vols on Saturday afternoon in Neyland Stadium.
The Tennessee Vols have played three SEC games this season.
All three of those games have been decided by one possession.
Tennessee beat Arkansas 34-31 on Saturday in Neyland Stadium. The win moved the Vols to 5-1 on the season and 2-1 in the SEC (Tennessee lost in overtime to Georgia and then beat Mississippi State in overtime earlier this season).
The Vols actually pulled away from Arkansas for a bit on Saturday — a touchdown early in the fourth quarter put Tennessee up by 17 points. But the Razorbacks never quit fighting, and they made a run late in the fourth quarter, which had fans in Neyland a little nervous until the clock hit 0:00.
Arkansas interim head coach Bobby Petrino says he made a big mistake in the loss to Tennessee
After the game, Arkansas interim head coach Bobby Petrino told reporters that he regretted a decision he made in the second half.
In the third quarter, with the Vols clinging to a 20-17 lead, Petrino elected to go for it on fourth-and-three from the Tennessee 25-yard line — instead of attempting a game-tying field goal.
Arkansas turned the ball over on downs.
“I’m mad about not kicking the field goal,” said Petrino. “I’ll be kicking myself in the head all the time for that one. I feel like we could still be out there playing and seeing if we could win or not. It was a bad decision. That happens. It was a bad decision. There’s no question about that.”
First of all, credit to Petrino for owning his bad decision. With the way the game was being played at the time, a field goal would’ve been the right call.
Now, whether or not that decision would’ve altered the outcome of the game is something we’ll never know. Petrino can say that kicking the field goal would’ve extended the game all he wants, but there’s simply no way to know if that would’ve been the case. There was a still a lot of football left to be played after that decision (21 minutes of game time, to be exact).
Both coaches made some decisions on Saturday they’d like to have back. But ultimately, the story of the game is about the decisions that were made, not the ones that weren’t made.
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