Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Vols’ 34-27 OT win at Pitt

1. Nobody ever panicked.

You can criticize the mistakes and be concerned about Tennessee football because of them. However, the Vols also overcame those mistakes to beat a ranked team on the road, and you can’t ignore how they were able to do that. They proved they were clutch pretty quickly after falling behind in the game.

Remember, this is a fast-start team, and they fell behind 10-0 because of all these mistakes. However, in danger of falling behind 17-0, they secured a key interception. Then they scored a touchdown to cut it to 10-7. Pitt went up 17-7 after that, but the Vols just kept chugging along, and they went up 24-17 at halftime, taking control after that.

None of the mistakes early on phased them. In the second half, every time the offense made a mistake, the defense held its ground. Only on that final drive did they finally wilt, but they consistently had big plays when needed before that. They allowed 13 points on five red zone trips. Don’t forget the overtime sack after allowing a fourth down conversion.

Finally, Hendon Hooker’s mental toughness to hit Cedric Tillman for that overtime touchdown was huge. As we mentioned on the previous slide, that came right after he had a touchdown run called back due to holding. He and Tillman needed a clutch play for Tennessee football, and they delivered in that moment.