Hogs stun No. 4 Vols 19-14 behind Malachi Singleton, Braylen Russell

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas stunned No. 4 Tennessee 19-14 Saturday night in Razorback Stadium with two unlikely heroes quarterback Malachi Singleton and running back Braylen Russell in front of 75,573 fans.

Quarterback Taylen Green left the game injured with 10:40 remaining in the game. That brought Singleton into the game with the Hogs trailing 14-13. The defense got a stop with 3:20 remaining in the contest. Singleton and the Hogs took over at their own 41.

On first down, Singleton hit wide receiver Isaiah Sategna for a 13-yard gain and first down at the Vols 46. Enter Russell at this point. Russell, the 6-foot-1, 253-pound freshman from Benton, rushed for 24 yards to the Tennessee 22. The next play was Russell gaining 11 yards to the Vols 11. On first and 10 at the 11, Singleton faked a handoff to Russell and raced around right end for what proved to be the winning touchdown with 1:17 remaining. The try for two failed. Sam Pittman was elated with the win.

“Tennessee has a very physical team,” Pittman said. “They came into the game No. 1 in offense, No. 1 in defense. Very good football team. Our coaches did a wonderful job preparing our guys, making them believe that we can go win tonight. These guys are happy, they’re not surprised. If we have the same amount of turnovers, we can play with anybody. The two games that we’ve lost to this point, we had more turnovers than what we got. Our coaches did a great job of making them believe we have a really good football team. We can compete if we take care of the football and we try to tackle well and play smart. We did.

“Defense, we did score points there in the first half in the red zone, then we scored touchdowns in the second half. Really good job by our coaches, once again. And our players, you get into coaching for moments like what just happened. To see the kids and the smiles on their face and the hard work they do. There’s a lot of teams that can’t get to that feeling, and we did tonight. And if y’all care, it was a one-score game. Might want to write about that too. But, go Hogs.”

Tennessee wasn’t finished though. They took over 75 yards away. On a third-and-2 play at its own 37 Nico Iamaleava passed 42 yards to Dont’e Thornton for a first down at the Hogs 25 with 35 seconds left. But the Hogs held on and the fans celebrated storming the field and tearing down both goal posts.

“The fans won the game for us,” Pittman said. “They got four offsides. I think it was the sixth-largest crowd in the history of the University of Arkansas. Our fans got us four false starts and it helped us tremendously. Our atmosphere today was like any of the elite university programs. Nobody had nothing on us today, and that was the fans and the facilities and everything like that. This was a big, big, big-time atmosphere for college football, and our fans made it happen for us. I appreciate them.”

Russell finished the game with 62 yards on eight carries. Singleton was 2 of 3 passing for 31 yards and the 11-yard touchdown run.

The Razorbacks scored first on a 20-yard field goal by Kyle Ramsey for a 3-0 lead with 5:48 remaining in the opening quarter. That was the first time all season the Vols trailed in a game. The Hogs drive was 16 plays, 74 yards and used 9:13 on the clock.

The first half ended with the field goal by Ramsey being the lone score. Tennessee got the ball to start the second half. They put together a 7-play, 75-yard drive that ended with Dylan Sampson racing in from 4-yards out and a 7-3 lead with 12:33 remaining in the third quarter.

After a three-and-out series for the Hogs Tennessee took over at its own 40. They drove 60 yards in seven plays with Sampson powering it in from the 4-yard line. That allowed the Vols to take a 14-3 lead and many felt here they go again. But the Hogs had other plans.

Arkansas drove 75 yards in eight plays with running back Ja’Quinden Jackson covering the final three yards. Matthew Shipley replaced Ramsey at kicker after Ramsey missed a 40-yard field goal. Shipley’s PAT moved the score to 14-10 with 4:33 left in the third quarter. Jackson finished the game with 20 carries for 57 yards and the one touchdown.

After the Arkansas defense forced another Tennessee punt the Hogs were looking to regain the lead. The Hogs took over at their own 20. Green found Tyrone Broden for a 22-yard pass to the Vols 45 from Arkansas’ own 33. On the next play, Green hit wide receiver Andrew Armstrong for a 31-yard gain to the Vols 24. Green was hurt on the play. Armstrong had 132 yards rushing on nine receptions.

Enter Singleton who took over at quarterback. The Hogs got to the Vols 2-yard line, but had to settle for a 22-yard Shipley field goal. That moved the Hogs within 14-13 with 12:08 remaining in the game.

Green played a clean game with no turnovers before exiting with the injury. He was 19 of 27 for 266 yards. Pittman was asked about the health of Green after the game.

 “I think Taylen, we’ll see,” Pittman said. “Obviously it wasn’t as bad for us not to ask him how he felt. Our diagnosis for him was he could get back in the game if he wanted, he could, but he got tackled again and then we just said, ok, that’s enough, let’s put Malachi in. Malachi, when he came in, we didn’t have great field position, so Bobby was trying to take care of that along with the field position. Bobby (Petrino) just calls what he wants to call on offense. We’re usually pretty good. I think part of that with Malachi was make sure we’ve got some confidence there. Never had to punt, and then the last two drives, he was phenomenal. He ran it very, very well. He scored a touchdown there to go ahead. He’s been here a long time and hadn’t got to play. To go in there and score the winning touchdown with the help of ten other guys has to be really fulfilling for him. I’m really happy for him.”

Arkansas had 337 yards of total offense to 336 for Tennessee. The Hogs had 297 through the air. Tennessee had 156 yards passing and 176 rushing. Iamaleava was 16 of 28 passing for 156 yards. Sampson rushed 22 times for 140 yards and two touchdowns. Pittman credited Travis Williams, the defensive coordinator, and staff for the job on Iamaleava.

“The game plan came in Sunday night,” Pittman said. “T-Will had talked about what he thought he wanted to do. We started practicing it on Monday. There were some tweaks and all that, but I think it was, we ran something that they had not seen us run, first of all. Second of all, we ran it real well. We weren’t going to let them get behind us if we could help it, and we were really worried about stopping the run, but we always had the edge covered, because we were bringing corners off a read run and we were bringing the field linebacker off the read run, and we mixed it up so we had a little bit of an odd front and then a little bit of a four-man and mixed it up. We brought total zero blitz, heat. I just through Travis did a wonderful job of calling the defensive game, and more important, getting the kids to believe in what we were going to try to do to stop this very, very, very high-powered offense.”

Former Vol Doneiko Slaughter and linebacker Xavian Sorey Jr. topped the Hogs defense with eight tackles each. TJ Metcalf and Larry Worth each added seven tackles.

Arkansas (4-1, 2-1) now gets a bye before hosting LSU on Oct. 19 in Razorback Stadium. Pittman’s teams have never lost coming out of a bye week since he has been with the Hogs.