Josh Heupel confirms that a theory about Tennessee's offense against Arkansas isn't true
Some Tennessee Vols fans have speculated this week that one of the reasons for UT's 19-14 loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks this past weekend was because head coach Josh Heupel was too conservative in his play-calling. Heupel admitted a couple of weeks ago after Tennessee's win against the Oklahoma Sooners that he pulled back the […]
Some Tennessee Vols fans have speculated this week that one of the reasons for UT's 19-14 loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks this past weekend was because head coach Josh Heupel was too conservative in his play-calling.
Heupel admitted a couple of weeks ago after Tennessee's win against the Oklahoma Sooners that he pulled back the reigns on offense because of the way the Vols' defense was playing.
Against Arkansas, however, that wasn't the case. Heupel told reporters on the weekly SEC teleconference on Wednesday that the Arkansas game was "different" than the Oklahoma game.
"Last Saturday at Arkansas, to me, that's a little bit different than the Oklahoma game," said Heupel. "I mentioned some of the things that we control. And that's not taking anything away from Arkansas, but some of the things that we control, and truly it was everybody, coaches and players, all of us being dialed in together. And that can be with things that we had in the game plan, to some subtle things that we changed, to pre-snap penalties, communication, all of it. The great thing about all of those things is a lot of it's in our control. It's really all in our control. To me, that's where we gotta get better. As a competitor, everybody wants to talk about the last week. As a competitor, win, lose, or draw, you gotta move on to the next one. And we gotta continue to prepare the right way for this one."
Sometimes the play calling looks worse than it is because of execution on the field. That's not to say that Heupel and his staff are blameless for the offense's failure to move the ball — it ultimately falls on them as coaches. But if players aren't executing the simple things at a high level, it ultimately doesn't matter what kind of play calls you send in.
