The Tennessee Vols managed to avoid disaster on a Saturday that was, frankly, disastrous for many ranked teams across the country. On a day where Texas and LSU lost to unranked opponents in Oklahoma and Kentucky, respectively, and Oregon lost to UCLA, Tennessee avoided becoming a headline themselves, rallying in the fourth quarter for a 24-17 win over the Arkansas Razorbacks.

But it was a four-quarter struggle for the Vols in a game where no one team led by more than one score at any point. Tennessee’s offense was held in check for much of the game, particularly in the first half, where the Vols put together just one scoring drive.

And according to former Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton on the A to Z Sports Tennessee postgame reaction show, it was a defensive design that Arkansas implemented that stymied the Vols’ run game and put it on the passing game to move the ball.

Per former Vols QB Jonathan Crompton, Arkansas lined up in an eight-man box with a deep safety and dared Tennessee to beat them in the air

“That was a showing by a team, in this sense Arkansas, that I don’t think it would have mattered who was playing quarterback,” Crompton said. “They were saying you’re young at QB, inexperienced at QB, and we’re going to try to make you beat us throwing the football. And they were running what’s called a bear fifty-three, eight man box, so every offensive lineman covered with a d lineman and/or a linebacker, and then having three linebackers in the box and a deep safety. Guys, they played him at twenty-five yards deep. That in itself tells you that Arkansas did not think we were going to be able to throw the football very well.

“He (George MacIntyre) didn’t play horrible. Two-hundred forty-seven yards passing. I know sixty-eight of them came on the one tight end slipped down the middle. A lot of offensive woes tonight.”

Crompton says Alabama won’t carbon copy Arkansas’ gameplan, but the idea is the same — stack the box

As far as whether Alabama, and all other teams on Tennessee’s schedule for that matter, will deploy the exact same defensive gameplan against the Vols moving forward, Crompton says everyone will have their own different base defenses and twists, but the idea will be the same: clog the box.

“They’ll have their twist on it. You know what I mean? You’re not just going to carbon copy what they do, but you’re going to have a twist. They’ll be whatever their base defense is, whether it’s a three four, four three, five-man front, depending on their base. But I would say in some way, shape, or form, there’s going to be somewhere around eight in the box.”

There’s little doubt at this point that, until Tennessee starts making teams pay for putting their cornerbacks on islands against the Vols’ wide receivers with a single safety back, Alabama and every other opponent is going to implement some look for what the Razorbacks did well against Tennessee on Saturday night.

Tennessee, to their credit, did implement a number of passes to the perimeter and try to get around the Razorbacks log jam in the middle, along with other calls.

And Heupel now has a week to try and figure out exactly how to counter what the Crimson Tide will surely do to slow DeSean Bishop and the Vols’ rushing attack. And which of his young signal callers gives him the best chance to do that.