Josh Heupel addresses College Football Playoff implications of win vs. Alabama

With a massive win on the Third Saturday in October, head coach Josh Heupel and the Tennessee Volunteers have put themselves in a good position to make the expanded College Football Playoff.

Following the win over Alabama, Heupel addressed the College Football Playoff implications that come with the win. In particular, he emphasized the need to find a way to keep his team focused moving forward.

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“Our guys are aware of, I mean, I wish I could put blinders on them,” Josh Heupel said. “That’s not real. Whatever the TV’s gonna have on the bottom of the ticker, you know what I mean? But for us to have a chance to be the team that we want to be, man, it’s about being in the present. It’s about competing as hard as you can every single day to grow and play the way that they’re capable and then the unit is capable of.”

There have been some concerns in recent weeks that Josh Heupel knows that Tennessee needs to improve on if they’re going to make noise down the stretch. That, notably, includes the slow starts on offense with the Volunteers failing to score in the first half for three straight games.

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“And there’s still things on defense and, man, there’s a lot more things on offense that we got to clean up,” Heupel said. “Good teams get better and this team’s got to continue to get better. If it does that they’ll have a chance to be a good team.”

For the time being, the talk around Tennessee is going to be about their chances of making it to the College Football Playoff. In his Playoff predictions, On3’s Andy Staples has the Volunteers currently holding the 10 seed. Meanwhile, On3’s Ari Wasserman lists Tennessee as one of his last four teams in the Playoff.

Josh Heupel, for his part, will look to make next week’s game against the Kentucky Wildcats the focus moving forward and not anything too far down the line.

If Tennessee were to make the College Football Playoff, it would be their first ever time doing so. That comes after Josh Heupel previously took Tennessee to its first New Year’s Six Bowl game since the 2004 season when they went to the Cotton Bowl.

Josh Heupel explains what he learned about Nico Iamaleava vs. Alabama

Quarterback Nico Iamaleava was inconsistent at times against Alabama but Josh Heupel believes that he showed mental toughness in the win.

“Young quarterback. It’s going to continue to get better. Guys around him got to help him too. And that means just doing their job at a really high level. But to me, quarterbacks, it’s toughness. It’s mental toughness,” Heupel said.

“When it matters the most, how do you perform? And how do you control the game? And there’s a lot of things, just physical, mental toughness that I really liked tonight. Obviously, there’s some things we got to get better at and him too. We’ll keep pushing for that.”