A somber Josh Heupel walked off of Shields-Watkins Field on Saturday night.
The turf below him had seen plenty of winning football during his nearly three-year tenure, which included 14-straight games. What happened moments before against Georgia will not be filed away in those memories.
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All of Tennessee' previous issues showed up in its 38-10 loss, the most glaring of which was the inability to get off of the field on defense and stay on it on defense.
The result was the No. 18 Vols' (7-4, 3-4 SEC) fourth loss of the season and its first in Knoxville in 735 days.
"There's been a lot of good ball played by the orange in that stadium for awhile," Heupel said. "Tonight was not it. Give Georgia a ton of credit. They're a really good football team and have been for awhile."
Georgia is good. Great even.
The Bulldogs (11-0, 8-0) were the last team to beat Tennessee at Neyland Stadium during the pursuit of their first of two-straight national championships in 2021 and look on pace for another.
Tennessee was 10-point underdogs but it could ill-afford to make the kind of mistakes that it made on Saturday.
The Vols were an abysmal 2-of-11 on third down and mustered just 277 yards of total offense. Outside of Jaylen Wright's 75-yard touchdown run on the first play of the game, Tennessee never much of a threat, losing the time of possession battle 19 minutes, two seconds to Georgia's 40 minutes, 58 seconds.
WATCH ON VOLREPORT: Tennessee football coach Josh Heupel post loss to Georgia
"Early in the football game, third downs were a huge part of it," Heupel said. "(Georgia) was able to convert. We weren't able to convert in any of our third down situations. After the initial run by (Wright), we had a little bit of efficiency but couldn't sustain drives."
One week after turning in the lowest scoring output in the Heupel era in a 36-7 loss at Missouri, Tennessee followed it up with the second lowest score.
It's an unusual trend for a Heupel-coached team. The Vols shattered all kinds of offensive records on their way to an 11-win season in 2022, which included wins over Florida, LSU, Alabama and Clemson.
With one game left in the regular season against Vanderbilt, Tennessee is averaging just 20.0 points in league play and converting 44.6% of third down attempts.
"Really disappointing that we haven't found a way to put more points on the board and help this football team win," Heupel said.
Tennessee's third down woes weren't limited to offense, though.
Georgia was 9-of-13 on third down, extending a number of scoring drives both with the legs and arm of quarterback Carson Beck, who tossed for 298 yards and three touchdowns.
WATCH ON VOLREPORT: Tennessee players talk after loss to Georgia
The performance came after Tennessee allowed Missouri to convert 11 of 17 third downs.
"I guess you could say breakdowns," Tennessee linebacker Aaron Beasley said. "We just weren't winning our one-on-ones. I feel like we weren't matching out our routes in zone coverages. We just weren't executing."
"A lot of it was in the pass game," Heupel added. "I said this week that there were going to be a lot of one-on-one situations. (Georgia) made plays in those situations. That can be protection, that can be giving the quarterback time, that can be making plays out on the perimeter. At the end of the day, we didn't do those things.
"Those plays, those conversions give you the ability to get to the next play. They were able to do that and we weren't."
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