It looked like it was going to be enough.

After Dylan Sampson, who carried Tennessee's offense to its first lead in the second half against Arkansas, rushed for his second touchdown on a 4-yard run with eight minutes left in the third quarter, the Vols looked like they were going to escape Fayetteville unbeaten.

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Sampson broke off a 53-yard run on Tennessee's first drive of the second half and scored a few plays later--the first sign of life for the Vols' offense after being shutout in the first two quarters.

But Arkansas didn't go away. The Razorbacks scored 16 unanswered points and upset then-No. 4 Tennessee, 19-14, handing the Vols (4-1, 1-1 SEC) their first loss and leaving them with more questions than answers after showing virtually no signs of weakness through the first four games of the season.

"This past week, offensively, you look at the football game, so many self-inflicted wounds. Pre-snap penalties, playing penalties, miscommunication," Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said. "So at times you’re not playing on tempo. In the course of drives when we’ve wanted to play with tempo, we’ve been able to do it and play it efficiently. (Sampson's) big run, there’s multiple instances of it. At the end of the day, you got to play smart, effective football.

"For us, we got to do the ordinary things at a really high level. Last week we didn’t do that very well. The week before that we did a lot of things really well.

As Tennessee was unraveling late, Florida was putting the finishing touched on a dominating performance against Central Florida in Gainesville. The Gators won, 24-13 in a game that was never particularly close, in large part because their defense limited the Knights' vaunted run game to 108 yards and an average of just 2.7 yards per carry.

Central Florida entered that match up with one of the top rushing offenses in college football, averaging more than 281 yards per game while Florida (3-2, 1-1) was giving up 231.3 rushing yards against FBS teams.

On Saturday, Tennessee will look to make that performance look more like anomaly than a new trend when the two teams face each other at Neyland Stadium (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).

"(Florida) is doing a really good job of playing up front and doing a really good job at the second level with the linebackers being connected together," Tennessee running backs coach De'Rail Sims said. "I think you can tell how hard they want to play. They're doing a really good job of getting on and getting off blocks. Their linebackers are fitting downhill, and then they get into their secondary support as well, with their safeties being able to fit the run.

"You see them continuing to get better as the season goes along from game one to where they are right now."

Tennessee's offense hasn't been as explosive as it was in earlier games against Chattanooga, NC State and Kent State.

The Vols did enough against Oklahoma, taking a three-score lead before halftime on a scoring drive where Sampson accounted for all 46 yards, including the touchdown, but didn't get into the end zone in the second half in a 25-15 win.

That was mainly by design, with Heupel admitting that he held the offense back, likely because Tennessee's defense had been so dominant and there never really a point where its lead was threatened.

The Vols struggled to find a rhythm against Arkansas' new-look 3-2-6 defensive front that hadn't shown up on film during their game preparations, though showed some adjustments on their two touchdown drives.

"I think that collectively we did a really good job of settling in (in the third quarter). We got the adjustments that we needed to make at halftime, which was good," Sims said. "I think we just came out collectively and everybody was settled, everybody was executing at a high level, and you saw it from an execution standpoint. As long as we are all on the money, that's when the big plays are coming. The big plays come because of the execution.

"We're just doing our routine plays, and now we're doing them at a really good clip and then boom, there is the explosive play that happens."

Sampson finished with 140 yards on 22 carries, which accounted for most of Tennessee's 176 total rushing yards in the loss. The only other running back on the roster to get carries was DeSean Bishop, who carried the ball three times for just 19 yards.

The Vols will need the kind of execution that Sims referenced early against a Florida defense that has seemingly improved. It could be key in setting an early tone that was missing at Arkansas.

"I think our No. 1 deal is us collectively doing a really good job of understanding what our role has to be in terms of how we want to attack them in the run game," Sims said. "And then do a really good job from that standpoint."

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