Tennessee football coach Josh Heupel made his weekly appearance on the SEC Coaches Teleconference Wednesday morning before the Vols travel to Lexington to face Kentucky at Kroger Field on Saturday.
Heupel discussed his team’s response to the Alabama loss, the Michigan sign-stealing scandal and much more. Here’s everything Heupel said Wednesday.
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Opening statement
“Hope everyone is having a great afternoon. It’s been a really good week of preparation up until this point. We know we’re facing a really good, really physical Kentucky football team. This is a line of scrimmage game like it typically is inside of this league. Take a look at what they’re doing offensively. First of all, their style of play, their physicality, the ability to own the line of scrimmage. They do a great job with their front five and multiple in their personnel grouping and sets, shift rates, motions causes issues for the defense. Have to be dialed in and have great gap integrity. Their tight ends do a great job in the run game. Extremely physical and the running back is dynamic and special. Huge test for us on the defensive side of the football and very similar when you look at the offensive side of the football. Big, strong, physical up front. Lots of moving pieces. They’ve done a really good job against the run this year. When you look at them statistically, top 15, top 20 in yards per carry. So with that I’ll open it up to questions.”
On the report saying Michigan had someone filming Tennessee’s sideline during last year’s game against Kentucky last year to steal signals
“Really just heard of that a little while ago, that that had happened. It’s something for us that offense, defense and special teams that I think every team in the country is and we’re certainly trying to hide your signals and constantly change them up and making sure no one is getting a beat on you. For us, that’s obviously important with the form of communication that we have with our guys that are out on the field.”
On his thoughts on the idea to have mics in player’s helmets
“As far as having a mic in the helmet, your MIKE linebacker or quarterback, I think that’s something everyone across the country has looked at. For whatever reason it hasn’t passed but certainly something that I think moving forward potentially has a chance to be a part of college football at this level.”
On the guarding caps players wear on helmets in practice
“It’s something that I hadn’t used as an assistant and when I got to UCF I was interested in and they had been using previously. It’s something that as we came here they were using it consistently. At the end of the day, every coach in the country— head coach and assistants— you’re trying to get the work that you need in over the course of training camp or practice during the week. At the same time, you’re trying to take care of your players. As we found more out about this game and how to keep their heads healthy, you’re looking for every advantage to put your players in the best position to be safe. We’ve been using it here. We do see that it’s limited. The things that happen, in particular over the course of training camp, and the long term research that’s taken place, a lot of it through the NFL, just repetitive hits and how that affects you long term during your life potentially we feel like it’s definitely the right thing to do and use to make sure we’re taking care of our players the best way we can. Our medical staff, our training staff, do a great job of continuing to track all that information and make sure we’re staying up to date.”
On his success coming off rivalry games in his career
“The lessons always have to move forward with you as a program, as players, as coaches. You got to continue to improve and put yourself and your teams, I say that players and coaches, in the best situations. Good teams continue to get better over the course of the season. That’s situational awareness. As you form an identity of your football team it’s fundamentals, it’s technique, it’s all those things. I just think that for us as a staff consistency is really important. Not that you don’t subtly tweak what your message is week-to-week but the things that you say matter when you’re winning and they’re the same types of things if it doesn’t go your way over the course of Saturday. Making sure you’re going through the process over the course of the week to give yourself a chance to play your best football is the most important thing. For us, after we win a football game when we get to the team meeting we talk about leaving it behind us and moving on to the next one. You’re only as good as your next performance in this game. Your family, the media, everybody is going to talk about the last one and that’s their jobs and the fans too. But as a competitor you have to move on. It’s about the next one. I think the fact that our message is fairly similar no matter what the previous result is helps our players buy into pushing forward and continuing to grow. There’s a lot of football left for us in this season also as a team. You only get so many opportunities as a team. This is a really good football team (Kentucky). They certainly have our attention. You look at the style of play that they have and the way that they play, we know that we have to be at our best. We’re going to get their best shot and we have to prepare and practice the right way. I really do like what our football team has done the first couple of days of our preparation. We have to go finish it the right way to give ourselves a chance to play the way we need to this weekend.”
On if they’ve thought about implementing Philadelphia’s QB sneak play, the challenge of doing that in season
“I think practicing your goal line situations over the course of the season or your short yardage is one of the tougher things to do— to get the true tempo, speed of what it’s going to be and what it’s going to feel like during the course of a football game. It’s actually something that we had studied during the offseason. I didn’t realize it was called the tush push which is why I asked where that was coming from during Monday’s media conference. They’re (Philadelphia) extremely, extremely good at it. That’s cause of the five guys they’ve got up front. Their center is an all pro and does an unbelievable job and their quarterback is dynamic with it too so they have a lot of elements to make that work and it’s certainly something we have looked at.”
On what the advantage of having other team’s signals would be
“Well it has the ability for a play caller to change what they’re calling. It’s not that you’re going to go execute that call perfectly but it may give you an advantage as far as what structure you may be playing in in any phase of the football game. So that would be the element of it.”
