What Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel on SEC Teleconference

Saturday afternoon Tennessee returns to Neyland Stadium following an open date to host New Mexico State on homecoming. Wednesday, head coach Josh Heupel made his regular scheduled visit on the SEC Teleconference where he was asked about the status of Jermod McCoy, the growth of Joey Aguilar and his defense. 

Opening statement: 

We’ve had a really good start to the week. I want to continue that to we get to kick off, Everybody as excited to get back on the field after a bye week, and I’m looking forward to walking in that stadium and go and competing with our guys here. on Saturday afternoon. 

Do you expect Jermod McCoy to play on Saturday? 

Jermod, you know, I’ve said it throughout the course of the season, obviously, a tough injury for him and for us, while we were off last January, before we came back and started our off season. He’s doing a great job, competing really hard, and has been a great teammate throughout all the rehab process. He continues to do more on the football side of it. Don’t have an expectation for this Saturday yet, but, he continues to do the right things to give himself a chance here at the end of the year. 

How impressed have you been with Joey Aguilar’s growth in such a very limited time with you?

The timing of when he first got here and all that it goes into to play in the position at had a high. I think it starts with who he is in the building, the type of teammate that he is. He worked extremely hard to learn what we’re doing and he got better every single day. He continues to do that.  As a staff, there’s things that we’ve done, and you put into a game plan and sometimes you almost forget, this is his first experience with it. I think throughout the course of the season, has continued to get more comfortable in what we’re doing offensively. He’s helped us create some really big plays and do some things. He’s at a really high level offensively. I think the timing of when he got here to go and kick off with him it’s been really impressive in his ability to grow as quickly as he has, because he’s been such an integral part of our success. I think on game days one of the great traits of great quarterbacks is they’re able to go play the next play, no matter what happens and play aggressive, like it’s the first play of the game. And you don’t know until you got a guy at that position and you go play and compete with him, what he’s gonna be like when those things happen. And, he’s been been resilient, been awesome.”

 Coach, I know you’re focused on the Mexico State, but having just seen Oklahoma and Alabama in recent weeks, I just can’t help but want to ask that match up in particular. I was wondering if he could give me your game analysis. What do you think of the Alabama, Oklahoma matchup, coach? 

Yeah, two really good teams. that, you know, that’ll be a great contest. 

Coach, I wanted to ask defensively, you had a lot to replace off of last year’s defense. How do you think this year’s defense is stacked up to your defense, even from last year, coach? 

“I think one of the things that we’ve battled on the defensive side isn’t just guys that left, as much as anything, it’s been some of the injuries that we had to battle through. And, that’s obviously two corners that are projected starters that midway through the first quarter of the opening you’ve got both of them out. And then, interior and at linebacker, we’ve had some injuries. At the end of the day, it’s a young group that’s continuing to grow, done some things at a really high level. I thought two Saturdays ago, we started putting all three levels of the defense together, consistently throughout the course of the game and so I’m excited about the growth and  how we continue to improve what we have to finish this, this season, the way that we want to and need to.”

 From a bigger pitcher standpoint, from the spring meetings back on the beach coach of the conversation of the college football playoff taking in the strength to schedule metric more, now that we’ve gone through two cycles and I don’t know how much you’ve watched of the rankings or heard of the rankings, but the idea of adding that ninth conference game because of that strength of schedule metric, I’m wondering if you’ve noticed at all the two weeks of the rankings that you guys are in?

I have not. I haven’t paid close attention to that at the end of the day. There’s still a lot of football to be played, no matter where you’re ranked. And you better show up in this league every single Saturday, and  I think I’ve said it before, but the strength of this league from top to bottom is as good as it gets.