OXFORD, Miss. -- Tennessee's football players tried to say all the right things about a week gone wrong long before Saturday's 42-17 loss at Ole Miss.

One by one they insisted that the stupendously stupid actions of a few freshman teammates early Thursday morning had nothing to do with the team meltdown about 60 hours later.

"We're trying to focus on ourselves, the guys that are here," senior quarterback Jonathan Crompton said about the arrests of Jantzen Jackson, Nu'Keese Richardson and Mike Edwards in Thursday's wee hours for their connection in an attempted armed robbery a few blocks from campus. "I don't think it had any impact on this game."

A few feet away, senior defensive tackle Dan Williams added, "I don't think it did for the most part."

Chimed in senior offensive lineman Cory Sullins: "Personally, I forgot about it. We feel bad for their families, the players and the actions they chose to take. But Coach (Lane Kiffin) talked about it for a minute, then we moved on."

And that's surely what Kiffin wanted them to do. Just forget that Jackson -- presumably suspended a week ago for a failed drug test, according to some news sources -- was so contrite about that mistake that he got arrested less than a week later in the company of a woman whose car was found to contain marijuana and whose teammates pulled a pellet pistol on strangers.

Because, when you really think about it, just what does that behavior have to do with winning football games?

Especially when, as Kiffin noted late Saturday afternoon, Jantzen was "on pace to be a Freshman All-American. He's a great player."

But dig deeper and not every Vol chanted the company line.

"It was definitely a bad decision by those guys," said senior running back Montario Hardesty. "Other than that, I have no comment."

Said junior defensive end Chris Walker: "It hurt our team, Those are our teammates, guys we bleed with and sweat with. It was disappointing. But you can't let it ruin your team."

Maybe it didn't. Maybe it won't. But this certainly looked like a far different Tennessee team than we've watched the last month.

This looked like a team growing weary, a team quite possibly still on the same page but no longer on the same sentence.

Sure, much of the trouble could be summed up by a single opposing player -- Ole Miss running back Dexter McCluster, who scored four touchdowns, ran for a school-record 282 yards and pretty much single-handedly wrapped up this Rebels rout.

And the absence of Jackson and his bone-jarring hits certainly hurt the Big Orange defense.

Beyond that, the Volunteers are about to hit The Cure portion of their schedule. Their final two games are against Vanderbilt -- which they've beat in 25 of the last 26 meetings -- and Kentucky, which they've beaten 24 straight times.

The Vols don't need a pellet gun to knock off the Commodores and Cats. A water pistol likely will do just fine.

But that's not what should worry UT fans or Kiffin this morning. What should worry them is what the actions of Jackson, Richardson and Edwards may have done to this team's chemistry.

Beyond that, since every sentence out of Kiffin's mouth contains the word "recruiting," he might want to consider what rival recruiters will do to him in living rooms across the country if he doesn't strongly discipline, if not part company altogether with his Big Orange banditos.

Think Urban Meyer and Nick Saban are just going to forget about three UT freshmen being involved in an attempted armed robbery if Kiffin lets any of these guys skate?

If it were the other way around, do you think Kiffin would?

After all, this is the same Kiffin who recently took a shot at Meyer for suspending Brandon Spikes for only half a game for attempting to gouge a Georgia player's eyes at the end of a tackle.

If you can't take it you shouldn't dish it out, and depending on how he handles this, Kiffin could take a lot of it in the weeks to come.

That said, almost no one believes he'll jettison Jackson. But that doesn't mean Kiffin shouldn't suspend him for the rest of the season, if only because the freshman didn't learn anything from his first suspension.

As for Richardson and Edwards, they seemed to be far more involved in the robbery attempt. Color them gone immediately.

Exiting Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Saturday, defensive end Wes Brown said of the week just past, "You've got to be fully in the boat and give this team everything you've got."

For the first time this season, the Big Orange boat appears to have a few leaks. For Kiffin to keep the season from sinking, he needs to strongly consider lightening the load by two, if not three.