What Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said on the SEC Coaches Teleconference

What Tennessee Football coach Josh Heupel said during his appearance on the SEC Coaches Teleconference on Wednesday, previewing the home opener against ETSU on Saturday (3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, ESPN+/SEC Network+) at Neyland Stadium:

Opening Statement

“Everybody inside of our program is excited to come back home here in week two. First experience for a lot of our roster, game day inside of our stadium with our fan base and obviously Vols Walk and the experience of that. And get an opportunity to go play against a team that played extremely well last week. And this is an opportunity for us to continue to grow here during this season. And we’ve had a good week of preparation. Just got to continue that as we get closer to kickoff.” 

How his philosophy on fourth down has changed at Tennessee in recent years

“I think each year your football team forms an identity and you try to play to that at times. So, it’s not just week by week during the course of the season, it’s also the opponent that you’re playing. And you take in all those accounts. I think you look at the landscape of college football, people are certainly more aggressive on fourth down than they were a decade ago. That’s in all areas of the field. So I think you take all of that in and try to put your team in a position to go win.”

His thoughts on the lawsuit trying to get five years of eligibility for players 

“Yeah, I wasn’t aware of that. I’m guessing that happened here just recently. But I did redshirt (at Weber State), gained valuable experience during that. And I’m just talking in learning the game, practice, learning our offensive system, all those things. And I think the real change from a few years ago, allowing those guys to play in four (games and still redshirt), was a positive. And you look at roster limitations here that just recently happened. The availability of more of your roster to be able to play certainly was important in being able to navigate that.”

If there is a downside to having a universal fifth year

“Not having put much thought into it, I think you’re balancing a lot of different things from the administrative side to the football side. So I wouldn’t have put enough thought into it, Mike, to give you what would be a true perspective on it from myself.”

If what he saw at Tennessee’s practices was what he saw in the win over Syracuse

“Well, in week one, a lot of new guys that were playing their first time here at Tennessee and first time maybe in college football, as well. I thought the things that we had seen during the course of our practices during training camp, you saw a lot of evidence of those things going into the football game. I thought collectively as an entire team, really good competitive poise, played smart for a first game. You look at the offensive line, I think, and all the communication and being in sync was a positive. They protected well around the football. Defensively, thought we did some really good things. Communication was solid. There’s some things that we gave up, too, that are some things that we can control, as well. Week one between staff and players, I thought everybody handled themselves in a positive way.”

His biggest takeaway from watching ETSU beat Murray State

“Did a good job defensively on the line of scrimmage and getting off the field. Offensively, were able to create some big plays and really efficient both throwing the football and in the run game and all those things. We got to be able to control the line of scrimmage and then win some one-on-one matchups on the outside.”