One week into the season and Tennessee’s football team is as healthy as any coach or fan could hope. Still that doesn’t mean the Vols are without injuries and Josh Heupel updated the status of a few of his players Monday.
Tennessee center Cooper Mays went down with an injury on the third drive of the Vols’ opener against Bowling Green. Mays would check back in the game but played just three plays after the late first quarter injury.
Mays is listed as Tennessee’s first team center on its week two depth chart but Heupel didn’t go into much detail about the sophomore’s injury or what the time table for his return looks like.
“Coop was in the building today and moving around,” Heupel said. “As the week unfolds we’ll continue to get a better feel for if he’ll be 100% at kick off.”
After scoring two touchdowns on its first two drives, Tennessee’s offense struggled to find consistency with Mays sidelined.
One player Tennessee didn’t have available against Bowling Green but expects to have available this week according to Heupel is sophomore receiver Jimmy Calloway.
Calloway was one of the Vols’ breakout players this fall practice before an injury sidelined him the last two weeks of camp. Now fully healthy, Calloway is looking to spark a Tennessee passing game that struggled in week one.
“Don’t have enough good things to say about him,” Tennessee receiver coach Kodi Burns said of Calloway last month. “Really stepping up, really starting to feel his body (and) how to play wide out. Quarterback coming out of high school, really developed throughout the course of spring, as well as the summer, and it’s really showing up on tape right now in fall camp. One of the guys that has really stepped up and started to make plays.”
Tennessee played just four receivers more than 30% of its offensive snaps in Thursday’s opener. That’s a small number for an offense that plays with as much tempo and runs as many plays as the Vols.
Calloway gives Tennessee a fifth receiver that it trusts heading into a critical week two matchup with Pittsburgh.
Junior college transfer Byron Young missed Tennessee’s opener due to a prep school he shortly played with in Alabama after graduating from high school in 2017. Young is one of Tennessee’s best pass rushers and is a huge piece for the Vols defense.
While Tennessee is still working through Young’s eligibility issues with the NCAA, Heupel said he expects Young to be available and that they’re preparing like that will be the case.
“We’re preparing like he’ll be back,” Heupel said. “We’ll get word sometime this week from the NCAA.”
Tennessee and Pittsburgh will kick off the Johnny Majors Classic Saturday at noon ET.
One Response
Been watching Tenn. football since 1948. Seen every opening game and Thursday was somewhat typical to all the others. Good and bad things on both sides of the ball in my opinion.
The most important thing to me is will those same bad things happen in game two? I’m confident that the staff don’t need us sideline coaches to tell them our opinions on the corrections that have to be made to correct and eliminate the many obvious falacese we all witnessed from the lack of offensive leadership & execution by key personnel. Hopefully it can be corrected PDQ or the kid needs to take a seat on the pine or transfer back to Michigan.
My Opnion Guy’s.