Josh Heupel addresses whether Tennessee allowed Arkansas to score in effort to preserve time

The Arkansas Razorbacks took a late lead over the Tennessee Volunteers that they wouldn’t give up in an upset win. It was a lead that, at the time, head coach Josh Heupel allowed Arkansas to take in an attempt to preserve time.

On Arkansas’ touchdown, it looked as though the Tennessee defense allowed the Razorbacks to score. After the game, Heupel addressed the move and confirmed that he wanted to get the ball back in the hands of his offense as soon as possible.

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“Yeah, at the very end of it just with the clock and timeout situation that we had,” Josh Heupel said. “Trying to give ourselves a chance to go answer.”

At the time, Arkansas was moving the ball well, particularly on the ground, on Tennessee’s defense and the clock was ticking down. With it only being a one-point game at that point and the Razorbacks well within field goal range, there was a serious fear that they could chew up the rest of the clock and the Volunteers wouldn’t get the football back. So, with one minute and 18 seconds left, the Volunteers let the Razorbacks score.

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Needing a touchdown, the offense was able to move the ball to the 21-yard line where, with just six seconds left, Tennessee had the opportunity to take a shot for the endzone. However, quarterback Nico Iamaleava didn’t get a pass off and, instead, scrambled out of bounds to end the game.

In a respect, the decision by Josh Heupel worked. Tennessee had enough time to get its own shot at scoring. At the same time, it always hurts to have let the go-ahead score happen in a game that you ultimately lose.

For Tennessee, it was a frustrating loss. Only scoring 14 points in the game was a surprise from a normally explosive Volunteers offense. With that, there are some questions from analysts about just how good that unit is for Tennessee. At the same time, as Iamaleava explained following the game, Tennessee has all of its goals still ahead of it.

“Yeah, like Heup [head coach Josh Heupel] said we’ve still got everything ahead of us,” Nico Iamaleava said. “We’ve still got all our goals ahead of us. We’ve got to use this as fuel to get us better for the rest of the season.”

If Tennessee is going to be able to get to those goals, namely the SEC Championship and the College Football Playoff, the Volunteers will need to turn things around next week against rival Florida. That won’t be an easy game, with the Gators coming into the game off two straight wins.