KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt recapped the Vols 31-27, season opening win at South Carolina during his Monday press conference with media via Zoom, but says the team is moving ahead to the next opponent: Missouri. The Vols, who are riding an SEC-leading seven-game win streak, which is third longest in the FBS, welcome the 0-1 Tigers to Neyland Stadium for the home opener on Saturday at noon ET. The game will be broadcast of the SEC Network.
Full Video Transcript
Opening statement…
“After watching the ball game, I thought what I said after the game was pretty spot on. When you look at us in all three phases, and I’ll start in the kicking game – I thought there were times in the game that we won the vertical field position, especially on our punt team, punt return and kickoff and kickoff coverage. We had a bad snap on punt, we missed a field goal that if we kicked it straight probably should be blocked. Things that you can’t have happen and we are fortunate that we didn’t get one blocked in the game and it’s something that we really have to address and improve on moving forward. Offensively, I felt like we were a little bit hot and cold. We were very poor on third down. Something that has got to be addressed. We have to be able to finish blocks and have to understand the down and distance as a running back. There were a couple of times that I felt we ran sideways at running back instead of hitting the hole up in there and taking what we got possibly being in third and short instead its third and three, which is a big difference when it comes to third down or the possibility of four-down territory. But we did create explosive plays on offense; there’s times when we moved the ball at will, but we have to make some consistency there. The No. 1 thing – we didn’t turn the football over offensively which is, in my opinion, the reason we won the football game. Defensively, again kind of the same thing. There were a couple of times that I felt like we should have got off the field on third down. Several times, we were a little bit out of place and we have to make the other team beat us and it’s something that we’ve got to improve on this week. If you look at Missouri, just watching the game they played against Alabama they won the second half. I know the game didn’t start off the way they wanted to, but if you watch how they play – they play extremely hard, they were aggressive, they created problems in all three phases so it will be a tremendous challenge for us as we move forward.”
On Darel Middleton and Shawn Shamburger’s availability on Saturday …
“We talked about last week from a standpoint of COVID and everything going on, I just don’t think its fair to the players to put out exactly why they’re not there. Hopefully, if everything works out, we can get these guys back very soon.”
On Bryce Thompson moving to safety …
“Jaylen McCollough didn’t really get to practice, he got cleared and going through getting him back to make sure that everything was okay with him we wanted to go into the game with a plan if we played him to really be in the second half. Kind of the same with Warren Burrell. They both have been in quarantine for quite sometime, just getting the guys back. To move guys around, Bryce is a guy that has been in our system for a couple of years so from a conceptual standpoint, we felt like that was the best thing to do. Theo Jackson is a guy that really can play all the spots and we went into the game trying to play him at STAR. It’s really not what he plays, he’s really more of a safety but just so we had depth in the game and to be able to have answers if somebody got hurt that is the way we decided to go.”
On how much time he and the staff have spent watching the Alabama vs. Missouri tape …
“When we play late games like we did on Saturday night, when we get back it is probably three or four in the morning for our players. We really focused yesterday on cleaning up the last game, making sure that we get all the corrections done from that game trying to fix ourselves before we try working on an opponent. We recruited the rest of the night. We had a walkthrough last night; we are taking today off with our players and we will really focus on the rest of our game plan today.”
On getting extra special teams’ periods in this week …
“I don’t think it’s adding a period or two, it’s about having players available. Your first four practices, you have no specialists there and then maybe 10 out of the next 14 you have over 50 players that are absent. With no spring ball, it’s not like there is any carry-over. Just being able to get the guys back and hopefully through the testing in the next couple of days, we’ll get good results and be able to rep guys in the same spots. Creating a routine and the guys understanding that this is the position that I am and this is what goes into that, is what we need not necessarily more periods.”
On what stood out after re-watching the game…
“I didn’t realize how poor we were during third down, offensively. There were probably three offensive possessions that we had which could have given us the chance to end the game or put some distance between us and them that we didn’t do when we had good field position. We’ve got to do a better job of closing out. Defensively, we have to get more turnovers. We got one turnover during the game. The ball was on the ground with a minute before the half. We had a chance to recover a fumble which would have been huge, and we didn’t.”
On Deandre Johnson’s performance against South Carolina…
“Deandre’s had a really good camp. He’s one of the guys that has not missed a practice. He’s been here every day and it shows. He’s practiced well every day. He’s a guy that’s been in our system for three years. He has some maturity about him, and he’s really worked hard this offseason. He’s got to do it week in and week out. We need him to do that.”
On if there are COVID concerns heading into Week 2…
“No, we have a lot of confidence in our players. I guess maybe because of a spike because of the students coming back in August, we had a lot of guys out. It’s hard to get good at football if you don’t practice. It’s hard to get good chemistry with the team if you don’t practice. With the exception of the guys that didn’t travel, Jaylen McCollough and Warren Burrell, we had almost everybody there. Hopefully we can continue that this week and create some momentum and chemistry. All these phases, from the first game to the second game, is usually when you improve the most. We have lots of areas that we need to improve on.”
On the front line’s performance…
“I feel like we made a lot of errors up front. I felt like our kids played hard, but we didn’t always play smart. We’ve got to do a better job as a coaching staff to put them in a better position to execute. We work hard to do that. I love our players’ attitude. They’re very coachable. The way they reacted on the sideline when things didn’t go our way was great. They didn’t blink. They just kept getting coached and kept trying to find a way. It says a whole lot about them.”
On Paxton Brooks’ performance…
“When Paxton signed here, he was about 6-5 and 157 pounds. He’s worked really hard in the weight room. I think he’s about 195 pounds now. I would have liked him to run over two or three folks on that bad snap and get us that first down. He’s kicked well and we need him to continue to do that.”
On what he thought of the offensive line’s performance and the team’s running game in Saturday’s win…
“We finished blocks, at times, much better than we have in the past. A couple of times, we got beat inside at the tackle position. We need more consistency out of the tackle position, especially in the run game. In the passing game, we’ve got to have a little firmer pocket. I think that contributed some to our missed throws. I do think as a unit, there was improvement there from last year, but it’s not where we want to be at. We’ve got to work hard this week to get it there.”
On the play from Tennessee’s wide receivers against South Carolina…
“We made a couple of really nice plays and a couple of good runs after the catch. We got the ball out on the perimeter. I think we’ve got to block a little better out there. We had a couple of missed assignments, based off alignment, which put us in bad position to get friendly with the quarterback. That’s something that can’t happen. We’ve got to be able to line up properly. There were a couple of passes out there that I thought we needed to bring in. There were a couple of drops that stalled some drives. Every position that we had on Saturday, there was really a lot of good things, but there’s really a whole lot of things that we can improve on and that’s what we’ve got to do this week.”
On Brandon Johnson’s performance on Saturday…
“Brandon made one really, really tough catch down near the sideline. Brandon’s a guy that hasn’t missed any reps during camp. He’s been at every practice. He’s a guy that has some experience to him, being a fifth-year guy who has graduated. It doesn’t surprise me. Brandon can play every position and he’s also a good special team’s player. He’s an instinctive guy and he’s a good leader amongst the group. Anything Brandon does doesn’t surprise me.”
On what he saw out of Jeremy Banks’ play, despite a couple of penalties…
“Getting penalties is how you play. I’ve coached a lot of really good players and Jeremy has a chance to be a really good player, but he’s not going to be a really good player unless he plays penalty-free. You can play aggressively. You can play physically, but you can do it in-between the whistles. It goes back to decision making. I’m sure when the game started Jeremy didn’t say, ‘I want to get two penalties.’ But, he did and that can’t happen. For the first game, I thought he and Quavaris Crouch did some things that were really good. We got messed up a couple of times in coverage, but you’ve got to think about both of these guys. ‘Q’ (Quavaris) played outside linebacker all of last year because we thought it was the best fit for our team. We moved him inside for spring ball and these guys haven’t played a lot of live reps. So, for the first time playing, there was some good and there’s probably some bad from both of them, but they are two guys that we feel like play the same position and we have packages to where we can get those two guys and Henry (To’o To’o) on the field at the same time. We just didn’t think we were ready for that right now. Those guys have a lot of work to do this week. I think you’ll see a lot of improvement out of both of those guys, especially after having a live contest.”
On how he thought the freshman class handled their first-career games…
“I don’t know if it was 11 or 14 of them that played in the game and I don’t even know exactly how many we traveled. But, these guys are going to play more and more of a role as the season goes on. For us, I can’t speak for the other schools in our conference or any other school across the country, but for us, with the circumstances that we’ve had over the last six weeks, when it comes to people being available for practice, has really hurt the freshman class, which is not normal. The fact that half of our team was gone for most of camp, we could only practice two groups. If you were a freshman that fit in that group or you were a third team, it was hard to work your way up to be a first or second team guy. I think over the next couple of weeks, you’re going to see us play more and more of these guys and as our coaching staff gets more comfortable in knowing that these guys know what to do so they can play fast.”
On what the season-opening win says about this group…
“Last year is over with. It’s good that we finished out like we did. We’re 1-0 and the way I look at it, I count all of the games that you play as losses, so I say right now we’re 1-9. That’s until you go earn it and win it. We’ve got a long way to go. We’ve got a lot of things that we need to work on, but we’ve got a lot of time to do it. This team, their identity, how they’re going to be remembered, they’ve got nine weeks to decide that. It will be up to them. We’ve got a lot of season left.”
-UT Athletics
