Tennessee had Alabama right where it wanted in the fourth quarter.

The Vols had just completed a drive all the way down into Alabama territory and had fourth down and goal from the one-yard line. A touchdown would have made it a one-score game. Quarterback Jarrett Guarantano called the play in the huddle, and the Vols hurried to the line of scrimmage with some tempo. Guarantano took the snap, and he tried to get into the end zone with a quarterback sneak. However, instead of plowing into the end zone, Guarantano tried to go high for some reason, and he fumbled the football into the end zone.

Alabama’s Trevon Diggs picked it up for an improbable 100-yard scoop-and-score that put the game away.

Following the play, Jeremy Pruitt was livid with his quarterback. Pruitt chewed Guarantano out and grabbed his face mask when he came to the sideline. The Vols head coach then benched his quarterback.

During his postgame press conference, Pruitt was asked about the play.

“We’re close down there on the goal line,” Pruitt said. “So you’ve got an opportunity to run the sneak of give the ball there to (Quavaris Crouch) again. There was some miscommunication out there. And that’s our fault. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s the coaches’ fault, ok, starting with me. It’s no reason to hurry up. The ball is this far from the in line. We ran two quarterback sneaks earlier in the game by pushing the pile and our guys, they dented the front a little bit right there. So, talking about it there on the sideline, we could either go back with it and run the sneak and we elected to run a sneak. Shouldn’t have jumped over the top. Should’ve pushed it there in the middle.”

Later in the press conference, Pruitt was asked if the fumble was deflating.

“Well, it wasn’t deflating. It pissed me off. I don’t know about you, but it pissed me off. We just put a great drive together, ok, and really ran the ball at will down through there. I would’ve liked to see us get the ball in there and seen what we could’ve done. There are lots of things that didn’t go our way in the game. Some of it we controlled, some of it we didn’t. So we’ll watch the tape, learn from it and go from there.”

Two of Tennessee’s offensive linemen were also asked about the play.