What Tennessee linebackers coach William Inge said on Tuesday

Everything Tennessee linebackers coach William Inge said during his press conference on Tuesday, looking back at the play of his position group through three games:

His evaluation of Tennessee’s linebackers after watching tape of the Georgia game

“The biggest thing just on our end is a couple of small things, and usually it always comes down to details of being able to finish some plays when you’re in the open space. We had a few missed tackles that we have to clean up. That’s probably the biggest thing on our end, that we’ve got to make sure that we continue to address and clean up and go through the work on a day-to-day basis.” 

How impressive Tennessee redshirt freshman linebacker Edwin Spillman has been through three games

“We’ve been very pleased with him from a production, from a leadership (standpoint), and from him driving on the field. He’s been doing exactly what we would expect and anticipate, and at times a little more. So we know that his role is consistently and continuously growing. And we know he’s one of the guys in the room to where when we sub, or the next man in, there isn’t a dropoff. Often at times, he’s actually doing better when he’s in the game. So we’ve been definitely pleased with him thus far after three games.”

How Tennessee linebacker Ben Bolton has earned enough trust from coaches to get playing time early in games

“Because Ben Bolton has really endured what we call the battle of the Navy SEAL, where we put him through a lot of instruction, a lot of testing, and a lot of pressure. And he’s come out on the backside of that showing that from a leadership standpoint, he understands how to lead our defense. But also from a performance and production standpoint, he knows how to drive the defense and put our defense in a scenario where he’s not an inefficient player when he’s on the field. So with that, he’s gained our trust. 

And that’s why on my end, I don’t think twice about putting him in the game.”

Edwin Spillman playing for UAB coach Trent Dilfer in high school at Lipscomb Academy

“Well, we have had questions to him about, ‘Hey, are these some of the things that you guys saw that you did in high school?’ From that standpoint, the biggest thing on our end, we’re going to trust and rely on our preparation and our understanding when it comes to how we get ready for the game. And we know just because of who he is, where they’re from, there’s going to be some bags of tricks that we just have to be ready for on defense.”

The challenge for Tennessee linebackers to play out wide in pass coverage 

“It’s just a matter of you having to do your job. The biggest thing that we tell our players is you always have to understand the call itself, the concept of the call, and making sure you do a great job of defending high to low. 

And those are the biggest things that we have to be able to work on. And when the ball is in the air, it belongs to us so we’ve got to be able to make sure we can go get it.”

What Tennessee has seen from UAB’s offense so far 

“I would say multiple in the things that they do. They have a lot of personnel groups. Primarily, let’s say the 11 to 12 personnel, but then you’ll see they do a lot of good things. And from my perspective with No. 11 (Solomon Beebe) — Is he a running back? Is he a wide receiver? No. 0 (Iverson Hooks) does a lot of great things. So what they do is they want to get the ball to the skilled players out in space and have you make the one-on-one plays and do some things to try to get your eyes and your eye discipline a little crisscrossed to where they can get someone free over here and everybody’s running over there.” 

The message to Tennessee’s defense this week, to bounce back from Georgia 

“Just make sure you work to finish. Finish your plays, finish the sequence, finish on third down. That probably was the biggest thing was on third downs. And when you continue to peel layers away, it was making sure that you can be even more efficient on second down, because some of the second downs led to a third down in medium or third down in short. And if you can be effective there, now you get them in the third down and longs. And that’s been our calling card. So we have to continue to, as we would say, bounce back and get to where we’ve been and do what we do.”

How much more depth they need at linebacker, having four in the rotation so far

“Yes, that’s something that we’re always looking at. And we tell the players from a development standpoint, you have to make sure that you’re ready to go and you’re doing the things that you need to do, to where when your number’s called, you can go in and you can be effective and efficient. If there’s one thing I would say looking over my shoulder that I wish I would have done is probably had (Jaedon) Harmon in a few more plays from our side. And that would have taken 10-15 reps off of AC (Arion Carter). But from us playing guys, I tell the guys, if you’re prepared and you’re ready, you’re going to have a chance to go in the game.”

Tennessee freshman Jaedon Harmon going from missing spring practice due to injury to earning playing time in Week 1

“Just his level of preparation has been very good when it comes to him in the meeting room, but also the things he can do on the field. You can see he shows flashes of being able to show up and being able to make some plays. And as coaches, we say he can do some things we don’t have to coach. And that’s exactly what you love, because he’ll make a coach look really good, just from a skill set when he’s on the field. So those are some of the things that he’s been able to do, and we trust it, and he’s going to be on the field more.”