Cocky Vols DB Said One of The Worst Possible Things about Razorbacks

Boo Carter
Credit: Craven Whitlow

Bob Kesling, the play-by-play man for Tennessee football, had seen a lot to like from Josh Heupel’s program through the first month of the season. Heading into Saturday, the veteran radio broadcaster had been especially impressed by the Vols’ steady approach to preparing for each game.

Heupel’s philosophy has been “you take each week the same and you do everything the same,” Kesling said on the Buzz 103.7 FM earlier this week. “You’re never too high or too low. And that has paid some pretty big dividends.”

Head down, go to work. Rinse, repeat. Simple enough.

Or it should be, anyway.

But it looks like one Volunteer didn’t quite get the memo.

Tennessee Football Player Feeling Himself In Big Way

On Thursday, defensive back Boo Carter apparently decided that playing for the nation’s No. 4 team as it prepared to take on Arkansas in a prime-time Saturday night game on the road wasn’t quite exciting enough. The true freshman needed more zest, it appears, so he hopped on Instagram and posted the below message to Razorback Nation:

In Carter’s mind, there was little question that Tennessee would pulverize the Hogs for its fifth win of its season. Before its last game, a 25-15 win at Oklahoma, Tennessee had beaten its previous three opponents by an average of 59 points a game.

While the Volunteers were 13.5-point favorites on Saturday according to Fanatics Sportsbook promo for good reason, they had also shown a professional, championship-caliber approach to the game. Well, mostly at least. There was this hilariously amateur IG Live locker room video posted by, you guessed it, Boo Carter.

In the above TikTok, Carter turns off the recording when he sees Heupel walking through the locker room in the background. The Chattanooga, Tenn., native knows enough to know his head coach doesn’t want to see that kind of tomfoolery go down. But that lesson didn’t stick. Posting a “belt 2 ass” beat-down prediction against Arkansas is just plain dumb. Especially when most everybody else on his team, including starting center Cooper Mays, is trying to say all the right things.

It’s ironic that Carter is chirping in this manner considering that of all the units on the Vols’ defense, his is the most unproven.

“The only area on defense that I think that might still be a question mark is the secondary because they lost 12 players off their secondary roster last year,” Kesling said on the Buzz. “So it’s been an interesting development for Tennessee to rebuild the secondary, but they haven’t been tested yet. They haven’t been tested by a really good quarterback that can stand back there and pick you apart.”

Arkansas Football Strikes

Well, sure enough, the Razorbacks’ starting quarterback Taylen Green made Tennessee pay on Saturday night, throwing for 266 yards on the way to Arkansas’ 19-14 upset of the Vols.

The 6-foot-6 senior’s long strides and talent for escaping pressure made him dangerous entering the game. Boo Carter should have considered that Green was only the fifth quarterback in the last 20 years to have 1,200 yards passing and 300 yards rushing through the first five games of the season, per ESPN stats.

The other four aren’t exactly chumps:

  • Tim Tebow
  • Johnny Manziel (twice)
  • Dak Prescott
  • Trevor Knight

“If you catch Taylen Green on the wrong day, he is going to light you up,” ESPN analyst Greg McElory said. “He’s a guy who makes ridiculous plays you just can’t quite wrap your head around sometimes.”

Yes, Green at times fails to go through his progressions. He missed a would-be touchdown pass to Isaac Teslaa in the first half. And yes, he’s not the most accurate passer, in many ways reminiscent of a young Jalen Milroe or Dak Prescott.

But a lot of the fault here should be shifted to his pass protection, which has been way too porous against better competition. In fact, it’s so bad that Pro Football Focus has dubbed Green as the nation’s second-most harassed quarterback second only to Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders.

But PFF also assigns a measurement for blame in these pressure situations, and found that Green is responsible for only 18% of the problem. His offensive line, meanwhile, shoulders a whopping 75% of the fault, as KATV’s Steve Sullivan pointed out in this week’s “The Hog Central” podcast.

Arkansas vs Tennessee: Let’s Bring in Tony Vitello

On Saturday night, Arkansas tightened up its pass protection against Tennessee, and that extra time made a big difference in Green throwing better before he had to exit the game in the 4th quarter.

The Razorbacks already had plenty of motivation to try to win their first game against a Top 5 foe in Fayetteville this century. They had even even more thanks to Carter’s bulletin board favor. Perhaps they can thank Carter for his motivation in racking up 434 yards overall (Boo Carter had all of two tackles).

Carter’s cockiness didn’t necessarily cost Tennessee the game. That’s more on Josh Heupel’s foolish game management and his quarterbacks’ bone-headedness down the stretch. Still, is is indicative of some corrosion to the culture that Josh Heupel is trying to build. Some Tennessee fans may counter that Carter did his countdown to ass-beltin’ before every game, not just for Arkansas. Well, that’s even more problematic for the image Heupel’s program is trying to portray.

You would think, of all athletic programs, Tennessee would be especially sensitive to such red flags.

For years, Tony Vitello’s Vols baseball program was full of this sort of amateur-hour behavior. They trash talked like nobody’s business, hoping it helped them gain some kind of psychological advantage over their competition. It was only when Vitello tamped down all the displays of arrogance, however, that Tennessee finally broke through to win the national championship.

Boo Carter apparently failed to get his own coach’s memo about what to do – and not to do – in the team’s weekly preparations.

It’s safe to say he’ll forego such trash talk in Tennessee’s upcoming games after Arkansas taught him the lesson Heupel couldn’t.

***

See more from Arkansas vs Tennessee here:

Yurachek Doesn’t Think Hogs Can Gain Top 10 Foothold alongside Vols

Without as many alumni as Tennessee, nor the same level of big-money support from corporations like Flying J, Arkansas is severely hurt by the way NIL agreements are currently set up.

That’s part of why its athletic director, Hunter Yurachek, is pushing for an end to the collective-style hierarchy/economy that exists in the NCAA right now. Razorbacks faithful are not only small in number (comparatively), but lacking funds. Or, at least, they’re lacking in the desire to give over funds, thereby hurting Arkansas Edge, the school’s athletic collective.

More here:

See our latest here:

Boo Carter’s infamous TikTok locker room celebration:

@cfbonfox

Freshman Boo Carter’s reaction after getting caught on IG live by Josh Heupel 🤣💀 #tennessee #vols #cfbonfox

♬ original sound – CFB on FOX

Excellent commentary by Greg McElory here:

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