The Tennessee Vols suffered one of the toughest losses of the Josh Heupel era on Saturday night in Fayetteville, falling 19-14 to the Arkansas Razorbacks.
Tennessee struggled from the opening kickoff. An lengthy nine minute drive from Arkansas to start the game (which ended with a field goal), essentially set the tone for the night.
The Vols played undisciplined and they looked sloppy at times. It was an uninspired performance from a team that looked like a for-sure College Football Playoff team just a couple of weeks ago.
It felt as if Tennessee thought the game against Arkansas was going to be an automatic win.
Vols junior running back Dylan Sampson seemingly confirmed that was the case after the game on Saturday night.
“If you go back and look, probably some of our actions were a little lackadaisical with the bye week,” said Sampson. “You know, taking things for granted. I told my team already in the locker room, we can’t take those things for granted. We can’t just flip the switch on. Every time we go out there, on the practice field, in the meeting room, we’ve gotta have great attention to detail.”
This isn’t complicated. Tennessee had a week that we’ve seen hundreds of good teams have before. The Vols were a little overconfident and maybe put it on cruise control at times ahead of the game against Arkansas. I don’t think the Vols thought it was going to be easy against the Razorbacks. I just don’t think they had the same juice and energy last week that they had in September.
And that happens sometimes. It shouldn’t happen, but it does (just look at Vanderbilt beating Alabama in Nashville this weekend). It’s nothing to be overly alarmed about. Josh Heupel and his staff just have to continue to search for ways to prevent these kinds of weeks from happening (it took Jim Harbaugh a while at Michigan, but he finally figured it out).
Saturday night likely served as a wake-up call for Tennessee. And if they respond properly to that wake-up call, they can turn this loss into a positive.
