Both Hendon Hooker and Joe Milton ended their days in disappointing fashion.

Milton’s day ended when he was sacked in the second quarter, which resulted in a lost fumble and a trip to the locker room for a leg injury. That led to Hooker stepping in for meaningful reps for the first time since he transferred from Virginia Tech to Tennessee.

Hooker was, to be frank, a breath of fresh air. Not perfect, but a breath of fresh air.

He showed touch on passes to the tight end, he made a dazzling head fake on 3rd-and-16 to convert with his legs and he gave Tennessee a chance to win. Of course, he also misread a zone read on an all-important 4th-and-1 in the red zone and his day ended with him telegraphing a pass that was jumped by a Pitt safety.

Tennessee experienced the first loss of the Josh Heupel era, and it came against a Pitt team that had a composed veteran quarterback in his 38th career start. What a concept. The Vols, on the other hand, started a quarterback who overthrew everyone at Neyland Stadium at least once on Saturday before, ultimately, he was forced to the locker room. That, of course, was Milton.

Heupel shouldn’t care if Milton looks 100% this week in practice. It’s time for Hooker to run Heupel’s offense.

Think that’s too reactionary? Did Milton not get enough of a sample size?

Well, keep in mind that he came to Tennessee having been benched in the midst of his 5th start at Michigan, and it was after he couldn’t engineer a scoring drive against Rutgers. But what about the thumb, you ask? The guy had surgery on it in January. It doesn’t explain why he still sails passes over his receivers like he’s throwing a Vortex.

Milton, as physically gifted as he is, isn’t the guy. Not at this level.

Is that too quick of a trigger on someone who only showed up on campus this summer? Nope. The guy who completed 1-of-8 passes in the second half against Bowling Green — it was essentially a Hail Mary jump ball — picked up where he left off. He airmailed half a dozen deep chances in the first 10 minutes of the game, though 2 of those were negated by penalties. Efficient, he was not, which was why the smattering of boo birds came out when he missed several receivers downfield who had separation:

Yikes.

So in stepped Hooker, who wasn’t necessarily asked to attack downfield. Instead, he got some high-percentage looks, including a 20-yard pass to Cedric Tillman on third down, and then a quick bubble screen on the outside for a 44-yard touchdown to Jimmy Calloway, who did most of the work (he got some great blocking on the outside).

But what did we see from Hooker? We saw touch. We saw him completed 15-of-21 passes for 9 yards per attempt. Like Milton, who had a 54-yard run, we saw the wheels, too. I cannot emphasize how nasty Hooker’s head fake was on that 3rd-and-long run.

This is the same guy who, according to PFF, had a 10-plus-yard gain on nearly a quarter of his 86 designed runs and averaged 7.0 yards per designed run at Virginia Tech last year. You saw shades of that Saturday, and unlike Milton, who isn’t one to run particularly well when the play breaks down, Hooker can improvise. He doesn’t necessarily need Heupel to draw up the designed reads for him to turn to his legs effectively.

And hey, here’s something.

I get that Milton’s arm is dazzling. That ball he threw to Jalin Hyatt when he got hurt in the end zone traveled just shy of 70 yards through the air. It’s like when you watch a pro golfer off the tee, and you see how the ball takes off with a new trajectory when it’s supposed to be coming down.

The problem? The only on-target deep shot Milton had was that ball, which was broken up at the last second. Heupel dialed up half a dozen deep looks, and there were 4 instances of Milton missing an open receiver. They were drive killers. They were points that Tennessee left on the field in a game that it lost by a touchdown.

As long as Milton is out there, there’s always going to be this temptation to call up those deep looks, especially if Tennessee’s wideouts continue to get open. Some might equate that to basketball when a good shooter needs to shoot through a slump if the looks are still there.

The other problem? Milton isn’t a good shooter. Say what you want about Michigan’s conservative offense. Only 1 of Milton’s 141 pass attempts at Michigan went for a completion of longer than 40 yards. With that arm, that’s borderline impossible.

And shoot, maybe this was never going to work. How many quarterbacks show up in the summer and set the world on fire? Even Joe Burrow had his share of struggles as a summer enrollee at LSU in 2018.

That’s why it was a bit puzzling to see Milton win the job out of camp against the more experienced Hooker. Maybe Milton’s skill set does line up with Heupel’s offense more because Hooker doesn’t have the arm talent, and he’s not particularly accurate downfield, either.

(PFF had Hooker’s 2020 accuracy pass rate on throws of 10-plus yards at 39%, which was No. 60 among 84 qualified passers.)

I don’t want to say that’s meaningless because obviously, it’s 2021. Heupel wants to — and needs to — stretch the field in order to execute his offense successfully.

But let me ask you this, Vols fans. If you had to bet your life on a Tennessee quarterback completing a 30-yard pass, would you go with Hooker or Milton? That solves it. At least it should.

Hooker’s ending on Saturday squashed what would’ve been an obvious call for Heupel. If Hooker celebrated a comeback victory, one would think Heupel’s decision was made for him.

Bad finish or not, now is the time for Heupel to see what was painfully obvious on Saturday.

Hooker needs the keys to the car.