Watch: Josh Heupel's Thursday press conference before Tennessee takes on Virginia
Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel met with reporters after Thursday’s walk-through practice, addressing reporters for the final time before the Vols open the season against Virginia on Saturday (Noon Eastern Time, ABC) at Nissan Stadium in Nashville:
Opening Statement
“Good week of preparation. Gotta finish it the right way, but it’s time to go play now.”
Updating the status of Tennessee center Cooper Mays
“You guys know, that have been here, we kind of make those decisions on Friday. Obviously got (one) practice left, so we’ll make all the decisions tomorrow.”
Updating the status of Tennessee defensive lineman Elijah Simmons
“Yeah, we’ll know more (later). But a guy that has been great all training camp and really all offseason. He’ll be out for this one. But we’ll see where that goes moving forward.”
What Tennessee has seen from Virginia quarterback Tony Muskett
“Guy that has played at a really high level and obviously transferring into a little bit of a new system. I anticipate (with) his experience, he’ll be ready to play at a high level. For us, we gotta do a great job of affecting the run game, eliminating normal downs and trying to get them into some third-and-long situations.”
Tennessee’s balance of keeping the hot hand in at running back while also rotating three proven running backs
“All those guys are gonna play a bunch. And that’s true this week, that’s true throughout the course of the season. Sometimes get into the second half of games and you end up feeding one guy. Inevitably in this game though, at that position, you know guys get nicked up, whatever it might be. And so you gotta go with the guy that are fresh and ready to play at a high level.”
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If he still feels good about the options Tennessee has on the interior of the defensive line, with players returning and added there
“Yeah, absolutely. You guys have heard their names throughout the course of training camp. Guys with experience are playing at a really high level. The young guys have a chance to be special players. So (we) feel good about where we’re at.”
If there was a moment where he knew this Tennessee team was ready to play a real game
“Yeah, you get done with training camp, you start your preparation this past week, you can feel that it’s time to go hit somebody else. You’re looking at 20 practices during course of training camp, 20 plus … so we’re certainly ready to go play. All the work that we’ve put in since the end of January is for these opportunities here. And this is a special one. It’s the opener to the season, really good opponent. Plus it’s unique that we’re opening up in Nashville in front of a bunch of our own fans.”
If Tennessee has cleaned up the stuff it needed to clean up from the scrimmages earlier this month
“Yeah, during the course of scrimmages, a ton of situational football that you get into. In particular the second one, we still work on a lot of those situations. Feel like we’ve cleaned some of those things up. I wasn’t concerned about where we were at based on that second scrimmage. There’s always things that you’re looking to clean up. Feel really good about where we’re at right now.”
