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Down by one, 29 seconds on the clock and an opportunity to upset a top-10 team on the road in the SEC. Do you take the chance at a two-point conversion to win the game with a consensus five-star, dual-threat quarterback who just threw a 27-yard dart for a touchdown, or do you play it safe, kick the extra point and pray your team can get the job done in overtime? Billy Napier chose the latter, and it didn’t pay off.

The Florida Gators (3-3, 1-2 SEC) fell in OT to the No. 8 Tennessee Volunteers (5-1, 2-1 SEC) 23-17 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville on Saturday.

It was a story of missed opportunities all night for the Gators as they went 5-for-15 on third down conversions, 0-for-2 on fourth downs and scored just one touchdown in six trips to the red zone.

The bigger story, perhaps, was the decision-making by Napier, who is in his third year as Florida’s head coach.

The one that looms the largest was the call to not go for two with a chance to upset the Volunteers in a game where the Gators were two-touchdown underdogs. After a touchdown pass from DJ Lagway to Chimere Dike to cut the Florida deficit to one, the Gators initially lined up to go for it, but after Tennessee used a timeout, Napier sent out Trey Smack to kick the PAT and tie the game at 17 apiece.

“We had a play that we felt good about and then obviously they burned their timeout,” Napier said in a postgame press conference. “And I think from the 3 there, we were playing good on both sides of our team at that point in time, so I felt like let’s go play overtime, give our guys a chance to play more plays. Wasn’t quite ready to do that at that point in time.”

After hearing those comments, the question beckons, when will Napier be “ready” to take a chance to win the football game? The decision could not have come from a lack of talent and personnel. Florida has a 6’3″ 239 lbs quarterback in Lagway who had all the confidence in the world after making a perfect pass to set up the two-point conversion opportunity. Putting the ball in his hands to either try to make an accurate pass or use his legs to get in the end zone is what many Florida fans would have liked to see.

This wasn’t the only questionable call Napier made in the game. Another came with over eight minutes left in the second quarter and the Gators up 3-0. Florida had the ball inside the Tennessee 20-yard line and a fourth-and-inches decision to make. Lagway was in the game at quarterback and Montrell Johnson Jr. was at running back, who had run the ball effectively on the drive already. Instead of using either, Napier drew up a jet sweep to Eugene Wilson III who was stopped short of the line to gain and the Gators turned the ball over on downs.

With a chance to go up by two scores on the road against the No. 8 team in the country, not stuffing the ball up the gut with two guys as powerful as Lagway and Johnson in the backfield is something that perplexed almost every Gators fan watching.

A third debatable decision came on the next Florida possession following the unsuccessful fourth-down conversion attempt. The Gators had a first-and-goal on the Volunteers’ 1-yard line and tried a quarterback sneak with Graham Mertz, who fumbled the ball and it was recovered by Tennessee. Again, Johnson was in the backfield but didn’t get the ball in a short-yardage situation. This time, however, Johnson had run for 42 yards on the drive, including a 23-yard gash in which he ran over a Volunteer defender.

Of course, nobody was expecting Mertz, a veteran quarterback playing his sixth year of college football, to fumble on the 1. However, the reluctance to give the ball to a guy who is hot and is used to carrying and securing it in a crucial spot was shocking and came back to bite Napier and the Gators.

In the end, Florida was unable to score in its possession in overtime as Smack missed a 47-yard field goal attempt. Tennessee capitalized as running back Dylan Sampson ran the ball up the middle on second-and-goal from the 1-yard line and scored a walk-off touchdown in Knoxville.

As the seat gets hotter and hotter for Billy Napier with every controversial decision he makes and every loss for the Gators this season, it will be interesting to see how long the head man keeps his job in Gainesville.