KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Another week, another opportunity for No. 2 Tennessee to prove itself on the national stage as the Volunteers prepare to head south for the marquee matchup in college football this week against No. 1 Georgia.

The Big Orange were back on the practice field Tuesday morning as they prepare for one of the most highly anticipated games in college football this season.

During Tuesday’s media availabilities, both coaches and players talked about the extreme challenges they will face this Saturday on the road in Athens against the defending national champions.

Tennessee’s defense is coming off its best showing of the season in last week’s 44-6 demolition of Kentucky, utilizing a physical brand of football on all three levels to hold the Wildcats to 205 total yards and just 98 passing yards.

The Vols will need to build off that performance in order to keep Georgia’s well-balanced and versatile offense in check on Saturday. For linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary, that starts with stopping the run as well as keeping the Bulldogs’ playmaking quarterback Stetson Bennett in check.

“Defensively, we still always hang our hat on trying to stop the run,” Jean-Mary said. “You don’t ever just say you’re going to take one aspect away, but it always starts with run defense with most defenses. So, we want to make sure that we can take the run away, but obviously we’ve made the pass a big point of emphasis for us.”

Jean-Mary emphasized that he believes Bennett is one of the top signal callers in the nation and that his experience, paired with his playmaking ability, presents numerous challenges for defenses.

“When I watch the tape, I see a very, very good quarterback,” Jean-Mary said. “I see a guy that led them to a national championship last year and can make all the throws. He’s versatile enough to get out on the perimeter, is elusive enough that he does not take sacks, and really is the catalyst to their offense. He makes some big-time throws, and he is able to extend some plays. He is, to us, one of the better quarterbacks we have seen so far this year, and I know we have seen some really good quarterbacks.”  

UT’s offense, which ranks No. 1 nationally in points per game (49.4), has been clicking on all cylinders and will need another big performance this weekend in order to come away with a win against the Bulldogs, who enter the contest with the No. 2 ranked scoring defense in the FBS (10.5 ppg).   

Should the Vols come away victorious, it’ll likely be in large part to the play of senior quarterback and Heisman Trophy contender Hendon Hooker, who has been one of the nation’s best players this season, especially in big games.

“I think with Hendon, his numbers are speaking for themselves right now,” quarterback’s coach Joey Halzle said. “He’s been in a lot of big games this year, and it doesn’t look like any big game has been too big for him. You haven’t seen him shy away from the moment. You’ve seen him step up, and every time we’ve gone against a ranked team at home or on the road, he’s stepped up and had one of his best performances of the year.”

Saturday’s SEC East showdown is set to kickoff at 3:30 p.m. ET on CBS. ESPN’s College GameDay will also be on site, highlighting the matchup between the top two teams in the country.

Videos, transcripts and player quotes from Tuesday’s media availabilities can be found below.
 

Linebackers Coach Brian Jean-Mary 

On game-planning for Georgia’s offense…  
“Defensively, we still always hang our hat on trying to stop the run. You don’t ever just say you’re going to take one aspect away, but it always starts with run defense with most defenses. So, we want to make sure that we can take the run away, but obviously we’ve made the pass a big point of emphasis for us. I feel like we improved last week, so we’re going to try to keep improving on the pass aspect of it. We just want to play really good defense at the end of the day, and however they’re trying to attack us, we want to try to take that away.” 
 
On what makes Brock Bowers so productive at tight end…  
“He’s one of the big pieces of their offense. It’s his versatility. He can line up anywhere on the field. Obviously is a mismatch in a lot of ways whether he’s on safety or linebacker. Runs great routes and has excellent speed. You match all that with a guy that still will get in the line of scrimmage and still block defensive linemen, you have a complete tight end. You watch the tape on them, there are guys that obviously are paying extra attention to him, and he’s still making plays. Obviously, his skill level is through the roof, and we’re going to have to do a great job on him to give ourselves a chance to win.”  

On what linebackers have done so far in stopping the run…  
“I always say run defense, just like pass defense, is like you said, it’s a team effort. It’s obviously building a run wall. We want to have every gap covered, all of our assignments handled, whether you’re the force player or you’re a field player, on every run play. We try to make that a big point of emphasis. I think our run wall, starting with our D-line, has been so much better. Our D-line probably doesn’t get the credit it deserves for how they are able to control the line of scrimmage, or even get the knock-back to get guys on their side, offensive linemen on their side of the line of scrimmage. Like I said, it starts with them, but you add the secondary and corners. I thought our corners did a great job coming up and tackling with some of those condense sets Kentucky had last week. It’s definitely a team effort, but it’s always a point of emphasis on stopping the run, and I think our guys are embracing that.”   

On Wesley Walker’s performance against Kentucky…  
“Wesley is a guy that has improved every week. Obviously, as a transfer coming in, having to learn our system and learn the way we do things, Wesley has been unbelievable. He had extensive playing time last week and made the most of it. With the numbers he had, he was actually our player of the game on defense. That tells you that he did some really, really good things. Just like everyone else, you have seen him improve from the first week all the way up to week eight that we just had last week. We are very, very thrilled with his progression so far.” 

On the Georgia TE Darnell Washington and RB Kenny McIntosh…  
“Two very, very good players. Zero [Darnell Washington], Agent Zero, he is a large human being. You do not find many tight ends that are his size, but the thing that is impressive about him is his ability to play in space. Not just to block, but to throw him the ball down field, which because of his size, presents challenges. I think he is another guy that is a match-up nightmare for a lot of people, just because of his size and his athleticism. I know they do not mind having both him and [Brock] Bowers on the field at the same time. [Kenny] McIntosh, you can tell is the veteran of that running back group. [He] does it all. They do not mind splitting him out. Runs tough. I thought he had one of the better eight- to 10-yard runs that we have seen from guys on film. We are going to have to do a great job of tackling him, because he will run through arm tackles, but is versatile enough to get out onto the perimeter and cause you problems. I think both of those guys are very good players.” 

On what he sees in Georgia QB Stetson Bennett…  
“A veteran. I know that there are some people that have questioned who he is as a quarterback, whether he is a Heisman candidate or one of the top quarterbacks in the SEC. When I watch the tape, I see a very, very good quarterback. I see a guy that led them to a national championship last year and can make all the throws. He’s versatile enough to get out on the perimeter, is elusive enough that he does not take sacks, and really is the catalyst to their offense. I thought that last year, and then watching the tape this year, you see a guy that makes a lot of plays for them. I know [Brock] Bowers is obviously one of the top guys in the country, but when you watch the film, I watch Stetson Bennet. He makes some big-time throws, and he is able to extend some plays. He is, to us, one of the better quarterbacks we have seen so far this year, and I know we have seen some really good quarterbacks.”  

On the role that field awareness plays in the game this week against Georgia…  
“Field awareness always starts with your preparation and understanding what formation that the offense is in versus the defense that you’re in. You always want to anticipate how people are going to try to attack you. You mentioned the Juwan Mitchell pick from this weekend, that was just simply getting to the ball, playing aggressive and understanding what route that the offense was trying to run. They tried to throw a quick route, and they were able to get a jump on it, which put him into position to get to the football on the tip. Field awareness is probably one of the number one traits that you want to have. If you’re going to play really good defense, there has to be an awareness—one, on what the offense is aligned in, and two, what are we calling and how are we going to try and stop it.”  

On what led to Juwan Mitchell’s strong performance against Kentucky…  
“That’s always a combination. With every run, usually if you are the inside linebacker, they have someone there to try to block you. Obviously with the run plays that they were running, they were a power running team, we had to do a good job of getting off of blocks. He did a great job of finding the football. It’s also not just finding it, it’s getting the ball on the ground, and he did an even better job there. I’ve always said Juwan is super talented, the big thing was just getting him healthy and getting him in a rhythm where he could go out there and play, show what type of player he is. It’s a combination of both. I think they tried to run the ball. That was their identity, and Juwan did a great job of being in the right spot and making a tackle when he got there.”  

On where the game last week against Kentucky ranked in physicality…  
“When we start talking about rankings, I am going to be retired and I will start ranking those games. You’re hoping that there is more to come.”  

On why Tennessee was so physical last week defensively against Kentucky…  
“I thought our defense just came out with the mentality. When you watch Kentucky, they played a different type of football. They wanted to be physical at the line of scrimmage. Their running backs ran hard. Rodriguez was one of the hardest runners we had faced. I knew that was the mentality coming in, that we had to try and win the line of scrimmage, and we wanted to win the physical battle. Kentucky had some plays there too, where those guys imposed their will and we were able to match it. I don’t think it was anything in particular that we said. We set out to try to take away what we thought they did the best, which is run the football. That was our goal going in, and we wanted to try and accomplish it. It wasn’t any magic potion or anything that we did any differently. It’s just like I said, our guys really came out, and our run wall was as good as it’s been all year.” 
 

Quarterbacks Coach Joey Halzle 

On Hendon Hooker’s decision-making ability and going through his reads…  
“He is doing a really good job of being invested completely into the game plan on our end, and also understanding what he is getting defensively. So, what you are seeing when the stuff that we do set up is not there, is him getting us right a lot of times on the back end of that. You see him getting into his second and third read, you are seeing him check plays at the line of scrimmage, then the defense check out, and he gets to check off of the check. So, he is doing a lot of pre-snap operation at a really high level, which is why he is being extremely successful post-snap.” 

On if Hooker has ever lost his cool…  
“I have not seen him lose his cool; he is extremely competitive, so you are going to see him compete at a really high level. It is fiery, like when you see him score on that option that he ran the other day. He was jacked up going in there, but he comes over to the sideline, jumps on the headset, and he is right back down to himself. He has the fire and the competitiveness that you want, but it never takes him to the point where it makes him play outside of his game.”  

On Hooker’s patience at quarterback…  
“It has been great, and we have had the conversation that as you start having success, especially in this style of offense, a lot of guys start to get greedy, and you are not seeing that from him at all. You are seeing him check the ball down. You are seeing him find his tight ends, his backs. You are seeing him get to comebacks, all that type of stuff, when sometimes it would be easy just to drop back and try to throw it as far as you can to Jalin [Hyatt]. But he is not just launching the ball when he does it; when he is taking his shots downfield, it is calculated, it has made sense to him, and that is why you are seeing the completion percentage down the field at such a high clip, because he is not throwing it for the sake of throwing it. He is throwing it when it makes sense.”  

On how much goes into preparing a quarterback for making quick decisions…  
“It is a lot. It is a primary focus of our offseason training, which is why we do our QB school in the summer, where it is all defensive recognition through absolute mud pictures because that is what they see when they snap it. Our guys, they have to process faster than anybody in the country, that is a fact. It is what it is, because we are playing at a high clip. So, they have to find muddy pictures and make sense out of them really, really quickly. His offseason preparation, I know I said that last time I was in here, has allowed him to see and dissect defenses extremely quickly, which is why when we are going fast, when it does look like a jumbled mess on the other side of the ball, he is still eye-definition, disciplined, knows exactly where he is going, which means his feet are in good position, which means he is accurate. So, it is the whole system playing together like that.” 

On Georgia’s defense…  
“You would not call them vanilla, by any stretch. They are a really good defense, we all know that. They have guys that can rush the passer, they have blitzers [and] they have cover guys. You do not see a lot of flaws on their defense looking at them, especially from a personnel standpoint. They are well-coached. They are in position, you see them flying to the football. That is why you are not seeing them give up big plays [and] giving up a lot of yardages, because they have a bunch of guys around the ball. You see a bunch of guys that are well-coached with really good eye discipline. So, it is not as much that they do not get home, or they do not force it; they are playing, they are making tackles, they are keeping everything in front of them, and they are making guys snap it again, and then they are doing a good job of getting off the field on third downs.”  

On what Heisman voters see in Hendon Hooker…  
“I think with Hendon, his numbers are speaking for themselves right now. He’s been in a lot of big games this year, and it doesn’t look like any big game has been too big for him. You haven’t seen him shy away from the moment. You’ve seen him step up, and every time we’ve gone against a ranked team at home or on the road, he’s stepped up and had one of his best performances of the year. The level of competition he’s playing in this league, I think people respect the fact that he’s putting up these kinds of numbers against this kind of competition.” 

On when he saw Hendon Hooker become a leader for the team…  
“At about the halfway point last year, you saw him come into his own and start seeing himself as the man, the guy leading this team as opposed to the guy that was trying to figure it out, trying to figure out the best way to do it, how he leads this specific locker room, because it was his first year around all these guys. People forget that with him being a senior, a sixth-year guy, that it was his first time around all these guys, so you still have to feel out the locker room and feel out how these guys need to be led and want to be led. So now, he’s completely taken that and ran it to the next level where now he can run it the way he sees fit, because the guys follow him because they know the way he works, the way he prepares and the way he performs on gameday. All of that goes together with him being able to take charge of this team.”
 
On Hendon being the perfect guy to coach up…  
“It’s a blessing to have a guy like that. Our whole quarterback room, I’ve told the guys that before. It’s fun going in there. We have a bunch of good dudes in there that are also really good players. They pull for each other, they’re critical of each other, so going in that room is a blessing every day that I get to be here and coach those guys. Hendon specifically, but all five of them in that room.” 

On the process of operating the fastest offense in the country…  
“As we are putting the gameplan together throughout the week, it’s a lot of it. Because like I was saying how the quarterback has to process this and how he has to see it, because the quarterback makes it go in this offense. It’s always communicated like ‘Is he good with that?’ So we take it into the meetings, we talk through it, Coach Golesh and I, and Coach Heupel, we all meet together like, ‘Alright, what does Hendon like, what do the quarterbacks see, how do they see it?’ If they’re not comfortable with it, it’s gone, so it’s a good communal effort to get to the best possible solution on a Saturday as a staff. On gameday calling it, I’m sitting there just trying to give out where bodies are as fast as I can, communicating to Hendon after the drive and talking to (Golesh), saying, ‘Hey, this is what he’s seeing out there, he wants to get to this.’ Cool, then we’ll put some stuff together, talk back down to Hendon and say, ‘Hey, this is what we are going to get to coming up. He knows what coming, and he’s ready to go operate it. So, it really is a true team effort from the guys down on the field to up in the box, to all week leading up to gameday.” 
 

Junior WR Jalin Hyatt

On how the team uses film to attack defenses and create mismatches…
“We do everything off matchups. Just see their tendencies. We gameplan that during the week and see what safeties are what and how they play. Are they flat footed? Do they get out of their breaks? What coverage are they mainly in? But, with Kentucky, they had some busts that messed them up and I’m glad we took advantage of it.”
 
On preseason projections for the team and what people didn’t see when evaluating this team…
“We’re a hard-working team and not only that, we don’t let the outside noise correlate to what we do in the building. That’s one thing coach Heupel preaches for our team in the team meetings. We don’t look at the outside noise and we know what team we have. I think we finally know our identity as far as who we are and that’s one of the biggest things that I felt this year that we changed from last year, just knowing who we are. You can see the confidence in all the guys. I think we know where we want to go and where we’re headed.”
 
On if there are any similarities between Georgia and Alabama defensively…
“Yeah, there are definitely similarities. Obviously, Georgia is going to have athletes and Alabama has athletes, but one thing for me that stands out with Georgia is how physical they are. They’re a big physical team, physical defense. They like to put hands on [you] and that’s something we have to prepare for and something that we have to be ready for this Saturday.”
 

Senior LB Aaron Beasley

On what led to Saturday’s defensive performance and how to build off the performance…
“I think what led to it is just our preparation throughout the week. I feel like we had a great Tuesday and Wednesday practice. We were very detailed in our preparation. I think that’s what led to the performance we had. Just doing the same thing, preparing the same way, having great practices today and tomorrow. That will lead to (success) Saturday.”
 
On the importance of this weekend’s game against Georgia…
“This is obviously a big game for us. It’s the next one for us. SEC game. Personally, it’s big. I’m from Georgia obviously. I feel like a lot of the Georgia kids on the team feel the same way. We want to treat it like another game, another SEC game, road game. We want to prepare the same, go out there and have some fun.”
 
On the defense improving this season…
“I have confidence in all the guys who are out there that play on our defense. Obviously, it’s a long season and we want to get better as each week goes. That’s the main thing for us, just getting better every time we’re out there on the field.”

-UT Athletics