Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava took much of the blame for the Vols’ 19-14 loss to Arkansas. Fortunately, there was plenty of blame to go around.
“A lot of that stuff is on me,” the redshirt freshman said after being sacked four times by the Razorbacks. “I’ve got to do a better job of getting our guys in the right protection. We’ll be better. We’ll use this as fuel and get us better for the rest of the season.”
We’ll see. The Vols struggled to move the ball for most of the game against Arkansas. Tennessee failed to score in the first half and in the fourth quarter. Iamaleava threw for just 158 yards as he completed 17-of-29 passes. His poor showing was most defined by the last play of the game in which he inexplicably ran out of bounds with no time left on the clock.
When asked about the play, in which he rolled to his right, Iamaleava said he saw an open receiver, but decided against throwing the ball right away.
“If I threw that ball, it was going to be batted down right away so I tried to let (receiver) Chris Brazzell work a little bit,” Iamaleava said. “He was covered at the time. As soon as I was trying to let the ball go, I felt it slip in my hand. I’ve got to do a better job of holding the ball.”
Iamaleava lost two fumbles in the Vols’ other SEC game, a 25-15 win over Oklahoma, earlier this season. Despite the consistent pressure in that game and from the Razorbacks, Iamaleava said he’s still confident in his offensive line.
“When a sack happens, I trust my guys to block up and none of those sacks affect me,” Iamaleava said. “My mentality is next play.”
Now, Iamaleava’s mentality has to be “next game” as the Vols are set to host Florida on Saturday. Despite the crippling loss, Iamaleava said Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel offered encouragement after the game.
“Heup said we’ve still got everything ahead of us,” Iamaleava said. “We’ve still got all our goals ahead of us.”
That may be. The Vols can still make the 12-team College Football Playoff, but they’ll need to improve mightily, especially on offense, before that becomes a real topic of discussion.
“We’ve got to play cleaner,” Iamaleava said. “We started too many drives off with penalties, false starts, holding calls. Any big play we had, it was a penalty. We’ve got to do a better job of playing clean, especially in away environments. We’ve go to come in here and play clean.”
That’s a far cry from being explosive as Tennessee’s offense was expected to be. However, just playing clean seems a formidable challenge.
