Tennessee football welcomes in Oklahoma this Saturday for a top-20 clash with serious College Football Playoff implications. Last year, the teams met with the Vols winning behind an elite defense. This year, the defensive production has taken a step back, though.
The Sooners hired former Washington State offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle to join alongside their new quarterback, John Mateer, at Oklahoma this year. While he wasn’t on the sideline to see UT’s defense a year ago, he gave his thoughts on this year’s unit on Tuesday.
“They’re a disruptive bunch,” Arbuckle said. “I’m pretty sure they lead the league in turnovers and they’re up there in negative plays, I think they’re just behind our defense. They’re a disruptive bunch. They do a great job getting you to third down and they thrive in third down. This is a ‘no crap’ statement here, but they want to get you to third down, just like any defense does, but I really feel like they feel like that’s where their money is made and they do an awesome job with that.
“They have two defensive ends who are explosive and can give real problems. They got guys at the defensive tackle position who just have a great motor and play hard. Really impressed about what they do there. They’re a disruptive bunch and they do a great job with that so being able to counter that is going to be an awesome challenge for our kids that they’re ready to take on. But, yeah, they do a lot of good stuff on defense.”
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It won’t just be the defense Arbuckle has to worry about, though. Expectations are that it will be a juiced-up crowd for the game, with the hopes of disrupting Oklahoma’s communication on offense and forcing mistakes.
Add in the game being slotted for a night kickoff and the extra energy of Tennessee going ‘Dark Mode’, and it should be as loud as a stadium gets in college football.
“It’s just a heightened sense of urgency to the communication aspect,” Arbuckle said. “In any game communication is key but whenever you’re somewhere like Neyland Stadium that’s known across the country to be an unbelievable environment with passionate fans, your communication has to be an urgency. There’s different mechanisms you can use to do that, I’m not going to just totally get into all that, but there’s different mechanisms you can use to make sure the operation is as clean and efficient as possible. It takes discipline from us, from our players and it takes a heightened sense of urgency to make sure you run the play clean, efficient and get it off. Different mechanisms that you can use but definitely a priority we have to be really in-tune with.”
Kickoff in Knoxville is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET and will air on ABC.
