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Tennessee

Josh Heupel speaks on challenges of scrimmage with several players sidelined

On3 imageby: Eric Cain08/09/25_Cainer
Jeremiah Telander

Tennessee football took part in their first scrimmage of fall camp Saturday morning inside the friendly confines of Neyland Stadium.

It was the second full-padded practice of fall camp, officially, and the eighth overall with an OFF day coming up on Sunday.

One of the challenges of the day for Tennessee, and the coaching staff specifically, was managing the numbers and personnel groupings due to the large number of non-participants in the scrimmage.

“Your practice habits matter in keeping guys healthy. Some of it you can’t control,” Heupel said after the scrimmage on Saturday. “Guys have continued to push and take advantage of their opportunities. During the course of the season, game day from week-to-week, there’s an ebb and flow and next guys got to be ready to go.”

It’s early in camp and the staff, coaching and medical, will not take chances on making minor injuries worse. So, holding out some guys for a couple of practices has been a commonplace for this staff in camp-like settings.

As noted in the practice observations throughout the start of fall camp, there’s a laundry list of players who have been limited. To our knowledge, there is no long-term injury of note to this point, but still several key players who are missing practice time. Some of the players who have been limited in practice were held out of the scrimmage on Saturday as well.

“I think you understand the totality of what’s going on in the situations that they’re put in. But in each phase of the game, it truly is the details,” Heupel said about coaching with injured players ruled out. “And that’s for all 11 guys continuing to grow. The guys that didn’t get that rep, one of the things we talked about is not making the same mistake twice. And if you want to be elite, you learn from guys that made a mistake that you weren’t in on and are playing your position. And I like the growth that we’ve seen. There’s a lot more out there for us still.”

Below is a list, compiled by the Volquest staff, of Tennessee players who did not take part in Saturday’s scrimmage. There could be others.

Players who did not scrimmage

CB Jermod McCoy
CB Rickey Gibson
CB William Wright
CB Ty Redmond  
DL Joshua Josephs
DL Christian Gass
WR Chris Brazzell
WR Braylon Staley
TE Miles Kitselman
TE Jack Van Dorselaer
OL Brian Grant
LB Jeremiah Telander

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