Remember when Josh Heupel was initially hired? Everybody thought Tennessee football would become more of a finesse team with its heavy focus on offense, and defense would go by the wayside.

Well, the opposite happened on Saturday at the Pittsburgh Panthers. Mistakes on offense and special teams forced the defense to step up, and they did just that. How they stepped up, though, was key.

This “finesse” team won the battle because its defensive front generated four sacks, nine tackles for a loss and 16 hurries. Pitt is supposed to be the program that relies on the pass rush. The Vols won that battle Saturday.

“They were physical, the front four, and their pressures were relentless on the quarterback all night long,” Heupel said of the defense in his postgame press conference. “If we hadn’t sacked them, we were hitting them early in the ballgame.”

Last year, it was the opposite story. Pitt beat the Vols because of their pass rush, registering five sacks and forcing two fumbles on those sacks. This time, the Vols forced a fumble on a sack.

When you really break it down, Heupel beat Pat Narduzzi at his own game. Narduzzi has built Pitt first and foremost around the pass rush and an elite defensive front. This is the program that produced Aaron Donald.

Also, to be fair, Pitt still had a solid pass rush in this game. They did get three sacks and five tackles for a loss along with a hurry. However, Tennessee football had a clear advantage on that front.

“Defensive effort, just in general, absolutely relentless,” Heupel said. “I said it earlier, the second, third and fourth quarter, that’s as good of a performance as I’ve been around in a long time.”

As Jimmy Hyams wrote, this was the first time during Heupel’s tenure at UT that he could give credit to that side of the ball for the win.

Byron Young and Tyler Baron each had a sack. Baron’s was a strip-sack at the end of the first half. Wesley Walker stopped a fourth down play on a sack. Trevon Flowers made the sack to win the game in overtime.

Young and Aaron Beasley each had three quarterback hurries. Roman Harrison and Jeremy Banks each had two. Everywhere you looked, the Vols brought pressure, and they often didn’t even have to blitz.

There were still plenty of issues in the pass defense. However, the Vols made up for it by being physical up front, knocking Kedon Slovis out of the game with that pressure and continually hitting backup quarterback, Nick Patti.

“I thought our defense absolutely battled (in the) second, third and fourth quarters and got put in a bunch of sudden-change situations,” Heupel said. “(They) handled that really well for the most part and just were relentless all night long.”

An underrated part of the defense was the knockdowns. The Vols deflected four passes, and three were done at the line of scrimmage by Beasley, Omari Thomas and Kurott Garland.

Because of the deflections, Tennessee football kept knocking on the door for interceptions but couldn’t quite pull through. Flowers did have one early, though, and he had that sack in overtime to secure the win.

Nobody exemplified the defense bailing out the offense for its mistakes better than Flowers. He muffed a punt return to set up Pitt’s game-tying touchdown and made up for it with his defensive performance.

“You could tell he was disappointed, but you could see it in his eyes,” Heupel said of Flowers after the muffed punt. “It showed in the way that he finished the football game.”

Make no mistake, this was a defensive win. In the second half, a Jaylen Wright fumble, a blocked punt and Flowers’ muffed punt spot Pitt the ball in the red zone three times. Overtime rules got them there a fourth time.

In those four trips in the second half, they came away with just 13 points. They had 16 in five trips to the red zone if you count the first half. Five trips inside the Tennessee football 30-yard line ended up scoreless for Pitt.

“They got put in a lot of bad positions, from turnovers, short fields, special teams,” Heupel said of the defense. “They reset, they played.”

Considering how we all thought Tennessee football was going to be developed as a program under Heupel, this is shocking. Defense still has issues, particularly the pass defense. That’s something we all saw coming.

To beat Pitt by being more physical up front, though, was a shocker. The belief was that the Vols would have to score 40 to win. They didn’t even crack 30 in regulation.