Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said what everyone was thinking during his opening statement to the media Monday afternoon.
“Best five words in Tennessee are ‘It’s football time in Tennessee’,” Heupel said. “Officially game week, looking forward to the opportunity of going and playing with this program.”
Heupel along with defenders Aaron Beasley and Doneiko Slaughter met with the media and previewed the Vols’ season opener against Virginia.
Here’s what the trio said about the Cavaliers Monday afternoon.
Josh Heupel
On what Virginia QB Tony Muskett brings to the table
“Been a really good decision maker, threw for a bunch of yards, has good pocket awareness. Him being in week one, year one within their system, what are the new things that they do to try and put him in a position (to succeed)? We’ll find out on gameday. A guy that has played really good football at a high level and has been a good decision maker. For us, we have to do a great job of handling the run game. We have to apply pressure. That can be from our pressure package, but it can also just be with our front four. We have to make him uncomfortable inside the pocket.”
On what stands out about Virginia’s defense
“They do have some new transfers, in particular on the backend. They have experience in their front seven. They are doing a good job against the run. We got to do a really good job of being dialed into our protections, our run schemes, make sure we’re targeting the right people. The question was brought up earlier, do our assignments, handle our assignments at a really high level, be really good in our communication and go execute.”
Aaron Beasley
On what he knows about Virginia’s offense and QB Tony Muskett
“The quarterback from Monmouth. I think it’s a small D2 school, I want to say. I’m not totally sure. I like him a lot. He’s a really good player. He looks like he wants to win a lot so really excited to play him. They like to do a lot of motions. They like to try and get the ball out on the perimeter to get you out leveraged and that way they can do a lot of play action and a lot of boots. They’ll take their shots. It should be a good challenge for us for sure.”
Doneiko Slaughter
On what’s different about preparing for the first game of a season
“A lot cause you haven’t really seen what they got yet besides the spring game— to go off of. It’s really just you’re ready to play now. You have that first week to prepare but now it’s here so it’s a lot of preparation and keep going. You’re just ready to get on the field and perform.”
