Austin Peay coach Scotty Walden had a 'holy crap' moment in his first game at Neyland Stadium
Austin Peay head coach Scotty Walden was coaching wide receivers at Southern Miss in 2017. The Golden Eagles had a November date against Tennessee at Neyland Stadium. It was Walden’s first game coaching against an SEC opponent and one of his fellow coaches offered up some advice.
“I’ll never forget,” Walden said this week during an appearance on WNML 99.1-FM in Knoxville, “our defensive coordinator at the time was like, hey, just pregame, go out there and take a deep breath and look around for about 30 seconds and just don’t coach yet. Just take it all in.”
Walden was confused at first. But when he got on the field, it clicked.
“I ran out of that tunnel,” he said, “those gates opened up and I was like, oh, holy crap. I was like, man, what a great atmosphere this is. I just sat there and soaked it in and it just put things in perspective. Like, man, what a blessing to get to coach this game and get opportunities like this.”
‘Go attack it and cut it loose. And have fun and go compete.’
Southern Miss lost 24-10 on that Saturday night in 2017. Now Walden gets another opportunity, this time as a head coach, with Austin Peay (0-1) playing at No. 9 Tennessee (1-0) on Saturday (5 p.m. Eastern Time, ESPN+/SEC Network+).
“I definitely want to go approach this game — and I think our players already are — with a heart of gratitude,” Walden said this week, “and then go attack it and cut it loose. And have fun and go compete.”
He knows the challenge in front of his team is just as big as Tennessee’s 101,915-seat, 102-year-old stadium.
No. 9 Tennessee vs. Austin Peay, Saturday, 5 p.m. ET, ESPN+
The Vols are known for their offense — they led all of college football scoring at 46.1 points per game last season — but Walden said there’s more that pops off the tape than Josh Heupel’s uptempo scheme.
“I’ll tell you what, when you look holistically as a team and you watch them on special teams, you watch them on defense and everything, they play extremely hard,” Walden said. “And that was one thing that stuck out to me studying them. Breaking it down on defense was not just the schematics, but those kids play really hard, run to the football.
“And it’s been really impressive to see what Coach Heupel and his staff have done. Especially given the time that they took over Tennessee and everything going on, to get it to where it is now. It was really impressive to watch and a ton of respect for, for Coach Heupel and staff in that program.”
