KNOXVILLE – Much as it did four times last season, Tennessee’s inability to close out a football game on offense nearly cost the Volunteers a win at Georgia last Saturday.
The craziness of two long touchdown passes in the final 19 seconds never would have happened if Tennessee had picked up a first down or two after Malik Foreman’s interception with 2:10 remaining, but the Vols instead ran three straight times and punted after burning only 63 seconds.
On Monday, Tennessee coach Butch Jones explained the thought process in that situation.
“You’re also looking at how many timeouts a team has and how many first downs do you need to close the game out,” Jones said. “You have to assess on the sideline what’s more important. Do you want them to burn their timeouts? Field position comes into play. Where is the ball at?
“I think the dynamics of the game come into play. Have you been stopping them? What is it going to take to close the game out? For us, in this particular game – and it may be different this week and it may be different the following week – is we wanted to run the clock and make them burn their timeouts.”