He was one of the victims of the inconsistency in officiating as Tennessee Football lost to the Alabama Crimson Tide 34-20 Saturday. Jacob Warren was flagged for a holding penalty that killed one drive for the Vols. He was blocking on a screen pass when the call was made.
This type of hold was nowhere near as egregious as what Alabama got away with on their touchdown to open the second half. However, Warren was very clear about any issues that the team had with officiating. For him, players need to adjust to how the game is called.
“The mindset has to be there’s nothing you can do about it,” Warren said Sunday on The Vol Report. “All you can do is play your cleanest game; be extremely focused on details of where your hands are, letting go of people earlier than you think you might need to or whatever it may be.”
Controversial calls in the second half include a ticky tack holding penalty on Gabe Jeudy-Lally, a rule technicality on a kickoff return that spotted Tennessee Football the ball at the four-yard line, and a clear pass interference when UT was trying to mount a late drive that wasn’t called. That saved and killed separate drives.
When asked about the officiating after the game, Josh Heupel paused for a long time before saying, “next question.” He was clearly trying to make a point with the pause. Warren said that games being called like how they were Saturday impacts defensive backs more than anybody else.
“It changes the way that defensive backs have to play the game whenever things are getting called pretty easily; it’s just a light penalty or a light tug or something here and there, and that completely changes the way that those guys think about man coverage and think about covering people and think about breaking up the ball,” he said. “Rather than playing free and just going and just making plays, they’re kind of playing scared to get a penalty or a flag or whatever it may be, and that’s not at all how you want your defensive back to be playing.”
For the game, UT was penalized eight times for 55 yards. That’s not crazy to think about given how often the Vols have been penalized this year and how much worse they have been on the road under Heupel. However, Alabama, also a highly penalized team, was only flagged once for a premature snap.
Even in the first half, Tennessee Football had questionable calls, including one bad spot that killed a drive and a delay of game on a defender for barking out signals. A holding that was more blatant than the penalty on Jeudy-Lally in the second half wasn’t called as well. Still, as Warren notes, it’s on the team to adjust.
“Once you realize that that’s what’s going on, that things just aren’t necessarily going to going to be in your favor, you just have to start playing really clean and just focusing on the details and the fundamentals of what you’ve got to do to play the game,” he said.
