CBS analyst Rick Neuheisel pondered Saturday if Tennessee football was right or wrong for its final-minute touchdown in its blowout win against Missouri.
The former college football coach was still pondering Monday, but was certain of one thing: Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz would not forget that Tennessee and coach Josh Heupel didn’t kneel down to run out the clock.
“Eli Drinkwitz is filing that away,” Neuheisel said at the Knoxville Quarterback Club. “Josh Heupel has been on the other side. It is a fraternity. We all get along. But it has been filed. We will see if that ever comes back to haunt him.”
No. 5 Tennessee (9-1, 5-1 SEC) scored three fourth-quarter touchdowns against the Tigers (4-6, 2-5) in its 66-24 win Saturday.
It had backups on the field for the final two. Vols quarterback Joe Milton hurled a 46-yard touchdown pass to Ramel Keyton with 5:43 to play.
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Tennessee got the ball back with 2:53 remaining. Milton connected with Squirrel White for a 58-yard gain to the Missouri 1-yard line. The Vols took a timeout, then Dylan Sampson ran twice. He scored on the second play, putting UT ahead 66-24 with 36 seconds left.
“When they didn’t make the touchdown on the first one … you could feel a little chippiness that they had tried to do it,” Neuheisel said. “I said, ‘Now, it is probably time to take the knee.'”
Neuheisel, who had an 87-59 record as a head coach at Colorado, Washington and UCLA, made similar remarks during the CBS broadcast. He said he was hoping Tennessee would go into the victory formation following the long pass to White, which pushed UT to a program record for total yards in a game. UT finished with 724 yards.
“There’s a graceful way to end this,” Neuheisel said on the broadcast.
He noted that Tennessee’s players on the field were the backups and there is a desire to let those players truly play. He then noted “there’s also sportsmanship” and Tennessee would face Missouri again next season as the Vols lined up before Sampson’s touchdown run.
Neuheisel suggested Drinkwitz put the touchdown run in “a filing cabinet” in his mind before pondering aloud if Tennessee scored to impress the College Football Playoff committee.
“You just hope for the pollsters, for the committee, you’re not trying to just show off,” Neuheisel said. “You just hope that’s not part of the reason. The reason is you want your kids to play. They came here for a chance to play.”
Heupel explained Monday that Tennessee had it backups in the game and the thought of kneeling down “absolutely went through my mind.”
“I don’t know what the right thing to do is in that moment,” Heupel said. “At the end of the day, our guys continued to play football.”
Tennessee has outscored Missouri 128-48 in two games under Heupel, a former Missouri offensive coordinator. The Vols have a 163-60 edge over the Tigers in three games against Drinkwitz, which includes a 35-12 win under fired coach Jeremy Pruitt in 2020.
Mike Wilson covers University of Tennessee athletics. Email him at michael.wilson@knoxnews.com and follow him on Twitter @ByMikeWilson. If you enjoy Mike’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Rick Neuheisel questions late Tennessee football touchdown vs. Missouri