Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel got called out by ESPN’s Stanford Steve Coughlin for failing to deliver on the promise he made during an appearance on College GameDay before the Vols’ game against Texas.

Heupel joined College GameDay a couple of hours before the game for a brief conversation.

During that conversation, Heupel said that Tennessee’s coaches were going to call an aggressive game against Texas.

“I love the way that we’ve prepared,” said Heupel when asked about his final message to the team. “We practiced well. Let’s tee it up and let’s go play it aggressive. Coaches are going to call it aggressive. Players have to go play it aggressive.”

Stanford Steve doesn’t think Josh Heupel was aggressive against Texas

Stanford Steve brought up Heupel’s pregame comments while discussing Tennessee’s 20-17 loss to Texas on the SVPod with Scott Van Pelt.

“I look at Tennessee, and Heupel was super confident (before the game), which I get,” said Stanford Steve. “He’s a confident dude. He always has some s–t to his game, which I appreciate. But listening to him talk about his team coming in, and he’s always been a foot on the gas offensive guy, and he talked about, ‘Everything we do is going to be aggressive.’ He said it on the show this morning, and he wasn’t. It was very conservative.“

After rewatching the game from the SkyCast view, I agree with Stanford Steve that the game plan against Texas was conservative. There wasn’t a lot of creative play-calling, and it almost looked easy at times for Texas to defend what the Vols were calling.

But at the same time, there were plenty of opportunities for Tennessee to make plays. The Vols, however, weren’t able to consistently protect quarterback Faizon Brandon. And Brandon was indecisive and slow to pull the trigger. If Brandon just lets it rip a few times when he had guys open, the Vols would’ve beaten Texas.

So while I agree that the play-calling wasn’t aggressive, it was good enough to beat Texas.

Tennessee just simply didn’t execute when they had opportunities.