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PITTSBURGH – Other than the outbursts at officials that all college football coaches produce at times, Josh Heupel is not one for emotion or excitement, at least not in public.
Nor, apparently, in private after the biggest win of his short Tennessee tenure, the biggest for this program since long before he arrived. The Vols danced it up, as it was absolutely incumbent upon them to do, to appreciate a gorgeously unsightly 34- 27 overtime win at Pittsburgh on Saturday in the bowels of Acrisure Stadium. Heupel did not.
“He had no moves tonight,” UT junior defensive tackle Omari Thomas said of his head coach. “He was chilling.”
But there was a glimpse of what this meant to him, and Tennessee, in the seconds after Pitt backup quarterback Nick Patti’s fourth-and-20 heave fell harmlessly to the grass. As the UT band launched into “Rocky Top” to celebrate with thousands in orange among the announced crowd of 59,785, Heupel found outside linebackers/special teams coach Mike Ekeler. Heupel launched into the best shove he could give of Ekeler, the most rocked-up — and, based on all available information, easily the most intense — coach on the staff.
“Let’s go!” Heupel yelled at Ekeler, who took it with a big smile. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
The last play. pic.twitter.com/S93eno8bef
— Joe Rexrode (@joerexrode) September 10, 2022
The Vols sang with the fans. Cedric Tillman lifted his helmet from the back of the throng. Tre Flowers took on hug after hug, from coaches and teammates, then did a lap around the perimeter of the stadium on the Tennessee side, imploring with both arms for more noise the whole way. If you audited all of those people on the mistakes they combined for Saturday, it would add up to a large number.
That’s also why this was so sweet for all of them. The No. 24 Vols (2-0) tried to give this one away to the No. 17 Panthers (1-1). Flowers muffed a punt. Ekeler’s special teams unit also had one blocked. Tillman dropped a touchdown pass from Hendon Hooker. The offense lost another fumble and it was mostly bad in a second half that should have seen the Vols separate after knocking Pitt starting quarterback Kedon Slovis from the game.
But they took it back. Hooker hit Tillman for the game-winning 28-yard touchdown pass in overtime. Flowers made it stand up with a blitz and a 12-yard sack of Patti to set up the final, hopeless play. The Vols were , in the end, more unflappable than imperfect. And on a day in this wild and wonderful sport that saw Appalachian State win at
“A year ago, a game like this?” Heupel said. “Not just some of the things we did playing, but the ups and downs, I don’t know that we could have handled that. … The growth and maturity and competitiveness (of this team), it’s so different than when we took over.”
If Tennessee doesn’t clean a lot of things up on offense and special teams, the home showdown with rival Florida in a couple weeks probably won’t go well. The special season that just got a big bump in probability with this win will quickly lose some special. Heupel — after leading UT to its first road win over a top-20 nonconference opponent since 2003 — made his unhappiness with errors appropriately clear as well.
Of course, if the Vols do learn and improve from this and rediscover their high-octane identity, their defense actually looks like it might be able to contribute to something special. Coordinator Tim Banks’ side of the ball was the revelation Saturday. It was not perfect, either, and there’s no telling how this ends up if Tyler Baron’s strip sack of Slovis at the end of the first half doesn’t knock him from the game with an undisclosed injury.
The Panthers had 415 yards of offense, got 154 yards rushing with a 76-yard touchdown run from Israel Abanikanda and made several big plays at UT’s expense — including tight end Gavin Bartholomew’s 57-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter, hurdling Flowers in the process and making it advisable for Flowers to avoid all “top college football plays” segments for the rest of the weekend.
But find me the better defensive performance by the Vols in this staff’s two-year tenure. You can’t. What you will find is a growing list of names of players who are emerging and giving this a chance to be a solid defense. Aaron Beasley can play the linebacker position, folks. Kamal Hadden can play some corner. Thomas can be a presence in the middle of that rebuilt defensive line.
Tennessee also got big moments from Roman Harrison, Wesley Walker and Dominic Bailey. New names. More depth. More plays. More potential for a unit that can hang in against the better offenses (or some of them, anyway) on the schedule.
The Vols had 16 quarterback hurries, their most in at least a decade — UT reported that its last game in double digits in the category was when it had 10 against Georgia State in 2012. Beasley (14 tackles) and Byron Young had three apiece, a year after Young said it was “heartbreaking” to watch from the sidelines — not yet ruled eligible — as Pat Narduzzi’s Panthers came back from a 10-0 deficit to win 41-34 in Neyland Stadium. Young and Baron looked Saturday like the pass rushers they are supposed to be this season.
“They played amazing, especially in the second half,” Tillman said of the guys on the other side of the ball. “We’re not in this game if they don’t make the plays that they did.”
Starting with a Flowers interception in the first quarter with the Vols on the wrong side of a 10-0 deficit. The whole Tennessee team was sluggish for the first 10 minutes. Then Beasley got a big hit on Slovis on third-and-10 from the UT 21, Hadden tipped his pass in the end zone and Flowers came down with it.
“We got our feet kind of underneath ourselves a little bit after that play,” said Heupel, the first UT coach in the AP poll era (since 1936) to get a road win over a top-20 team in each of his first two seasons. “It stopped the momentum, the bleeding, whatever you want to say.”
And Flowers, in an ultimate highs-and-lows performance, kept playing even after his muffed punt that gave Pitt life midway through the fourth.
“Hats off to Tre making up for the muffed punt,” Hooker said of Flowers, one of his closest friends on the team. “I never doubted him one bit. You don’t have to say nothing to real ballers. They know what to do. Perseverance, he’s a strong-minded guy. I feel like there’s a lot of guys on our team who are strong-minded.”
Take Tillman, who had a monster day — nine catches and 162 yards on 18 targets — but also dropped a long touchdown pass that could have made for a less dramatic ending. It was another day of UT narrowly missing several bombs against Narduzzi’s aggressive, dare -you-to-beat-us-deep defense. Hooker hit a couple, too, 61 yards to Tillman and 32 yards to Bru McCoy. But the second half was full of frustration. Hooker gave the offense a “C” for the entire day. Tillman went up to the defense during the second half, took the blame for how he was playing and promised to atone.
In the end, Hooker and Tillman set up Flowers’ redemption with the winning offensive play. It was second-and-13 from the Pitt 28. MJ Devonshire was the victimized Pitt cornerback.
“Saw the guy’s leverage, I went inside, Hendon made a hell of a play, and the ball was in the air so I just attacked it,” Tillman said.
“He ran a post and I kind of saw (Devonshire) trailing him,” Hooker said of Tillman. “I was trying to buy some time so I kind of moved up in the pocket. It turned into a little sprint forward. But yeah , just giving my guy a chance. I have full trust in all my receivers. I was telling them that all night, like, ‘Guys, I got trust in y’all, I’m gonna put the ball in the air and you ‘re gonna go make a play.’ Ced does what he does.”
And the Vols will do what they do, relying on plays like that to be more the norm than the exception on the biggest Saturdays ahead. Mix in some of that defense, clean up a lot of that kicking game, and they’re going to win like they haven’t won in a while.
(Photo of Cedric Tillman: Justin Berl / Getty Images)
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