Arkansas earned the signature win of the Sam Pittman era on Saturday, upsetting 4th-ranked Tennessee 19-14 in front of a rowdy crowd of more than 75,000 in Fayetteville (sixth-largest all time).
And they did it not only by winning a one-score game, but by coming from 11 points down in the second half. It’s just the third win of the Pittman era against an FBS opponent when trailing in the fourth quarter, and the first time a Pittman-coached team has come back from down double-digits against an FBS team.
Taylen Green was magnificent, completing 19 of 27 passes for 266 yards, but the story of the game was the defense, which shut down Tennessee’s vaunted offense. Over at Best of Arkansas Sports, I took a closer look into the 3-2-6 Dime defense that the Hogs deployed against the Vols.
Should the Hogs have scored the go-ahead touchdown?
Kirk Herbstreit had a little bit of a slip of the tongue when describing Malachi Singleton’s go-ahead touchdown with 1:17 left. Herbstreit said that if Singleton “had been smart”, he would have gone down at the Tennessee 1. The Volunteers were letting him score to get the ball back to their offense.
I don’t think Herbstreit meant that Singleton scoring was a dumb play, but let’s look at the possible scenarios of Singleton did try to go down rather than score. I ultimately think that it made sense for Tennessee to let him score, but it also made sense for the Hogs to just take the points.
Singleton scored on 1st-and-10 from the 11 with 1:17 left, and Tennessee had two timeouts. The Vols led 14-13 prior to the touchdown.
Scenario 1: Singleton falls at the 1. This is the best-case scenario, as the Hogs would have first-and-goal and could take three knees and then kick the game-winner with no time on the clock. Tennessee would call their timeouts after the first two knees, but they would not be able to prevent the clock from going to zero. There’s still some risk here, as the Hogs would have to execute the quarterback-center exchange three times without Bo Nix’ing it, and then the backup kicker would have to make a (very short) field goal.
Scenario 2: Singleton falls at the 2. This is where it gets complicated. Falling down at exactly the one-yard-line is not easy. If Singleton slid, for instance, he’d be marked down based on where his slide started. If he doesn’t get the first down (requiring him to reach the 1), it’s actually a very different situation. If Singleton was marked down at the 2, it would be 2nd-and-1 and Tennessee would call a timeout. Now there are two possible continuations:
Scenario 2A: Two knees then kick. The conservative approach on 2nd-and-1 would be to take two knees and then kick the field goal. Tennessee would take a timeout after the first knee, and the second knee on third down would work the clock down to about 25-30 seconds. This means Tennessee would get the ball back needing only a field goal to win. If that 42-yard bomb on the final drive happened in a 16-14 game (instead of a 19-14 one), the Vols would be kicking for the win. Preventing a touchdown is much easier than preventing a big pass generally, so this move actually carries a ton of risk, if not more than just scoring the touchdown.
Scenario 2B: Run the ball. The aggressive approach would be to run the ball on 2nd-and-1 and try to get the first down. Of course, if you actually end up scoring on second down, then you end up in nearly the same situation as what actually happened: the Vols would have about 1:12 and one timeout, needing a touchdown. The difference is that you took extra risk by running a play before scoring. The ideal end here is to gain one yard and set up first-and-goal, and then follow Scenario 1 by kicking as the clock expires. But gaining exactly one yard and not scoring is not easy to do, especially with Tennessee going for broke to punch the ball out and/or force you into the endzone.
So I think that because of the specifics of the situation (1:17, ball on the 11, two timeouts for Tennessee), taking the touchdown made the most sense for Arkansas. Everything else adds a degree of risk that is hard to justify.
I also think it made sense for Tennessee to do what it did. But letting the Hogs score is quite a bad look for Vol coach Josh Heupel, who had relied on his defense with conservative playcalling for much of the second half, before suddenly about-facing and trying to flip his trust back to his offense.
Advanced stats
As usual, the Hogs had to pretty thoroughly outplay the Vols in order to win a close game. The Razorbacks had four first-half drives get first downs inside the Tennessee 40 but only had three points to show for it.
The Hogs averaged 6.7 plays per drive, chewed up 53% of available yards, and had seven of 11 drives get inside the Vol 40, but once again, they averaged just 2.9 points per scoring opportunity thanks to a pair of failed fourth downs and a missed field goal.
Tennessee couldn’t buy an explosive play thanks to Arkansas’ 3-2-6 Dime defense, and the Vols were horrific when falling behind the chains.
Arkansas, on the other hand, struggled to run the football and were bad on early downs, but in typical Bobby Petrino fashion, they made a ton of plays when they were knocked off-schedule. In terms of raw Win Probability Added, the wheel route to Ja’Quinden Jackson on 3rd-and-15 at the Arkansas 1 was one of the most impactful plays of the game. If the Hogs had to punt from their own 1, Tennessee almost certainly would have gotten points on their ensuing possession.
The Hogs used defensive backs to set the edge and come up in run support, so they didn’t generate many negative rushes, hence Tennessee’s excellent line yards. But both run games saw sub-40% success on the ground, so neither team could rely on their run game to win. That was the goal for the Hogs: contain the run and make Nico Iamaleava throw into tight windows.
This was easily Taylen Green’s best game as a Hog. He didn’t turn it over, and he posted good success and explosive play rates. It helps that the Razorback offensive line protected him well against a very good pass rush.
For Iamaleava… yikes. He was running for his life for the entire first half, but he never seemed to figure out what Arkansas’ coverage was doing. Most of his completions were short, the Vols had just one explosive play: the 42-yard bomb on the final drive.
Highlights
Up next
The Hogs have a much-needed open date to get healthy and prepare for a stretch of winnable games, starting with LSU in Fayetteville in two weeks. Have the Hogs turned a corner in terms of close games performance? We’ll see, but this was promising. The six wins needed to save Pittman’s job now appear very likely, so the Hogs can set their sights on trying to win seven or eight games.
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