Tennessee football: Five takeaways from 2021 spring game
On offensive shootout that saw all three quarterbacks work with both units saw the Orange beat the White 42-37 in Josh Heupel’s first spring game as head coach of the Tennessee football team. Numerous questions remained unanswered, and the program is still in a state of limbo, but for one Saturday, fans got to see some real entertainment between the hashes.
After a three-and-out on the first drive, points poured in on both sides. The White went up early after a Jaylen Wright touchdown run. They traded scores with the Orange after that into the second quarter, when the Orange took a 21-17 lead and then had a pick-six to go up 28-17 and take control.
Although the White cut it back to within a touchdown three times, the Orange scored twice in between them, never allowing them to catch up fully. Heupel cut quarters short at times and also used numerous walk-ons. Still, we were able to learn some things from this outing. Here are five takeaways from Tennessee football’s 2021 Orange and White game.
5. Tempo no joke but also revealing
Despite cutting all four quarters short, the White team still managed to run 60 plays. That would seem typical of a Heupel-coached team. However, there’s another layer to this that we have to take into account. The White team lost. On the other hand, the Orange team ran only 39 plays. They just picked up bigger chunks of yards in the process.
This is actually typical of what Heupel did with the UCF Knights. His most recent team ran 86 plays a game. That was also his worst team. Meanwhile, his best team ran only 75 plays a game, the fewest all three years he was there. Even as offensive coordinator of the Missouri Tigers, Heupel was better when running fewer plays. He ran 70 plays a game in 2017 and 79 in 2016.
All this is to say that while tempo is a factor in Heupel’s offenses, big plays is another huge factor. Teams that connect on big plays run fewer plays overall, rendering tempo irrelevant, and that was on display in his first spring game as Tennessee football’s head coach.