Josh Heupel took to the podium on Monday afternoon in Knoxville, kicking off UTSA week and sifting through the mess that was the Florida game last Saturday night. Heupel spoke about mental mistakes, injuries, Joe Milton’s performance and more.
Below are the highlights.
Penalties
Ten penalties for 79 yards on Saturday isn’t going to cut it. Tough environment, sure, but through three games, Tennessee ranks 111th in the FBS with eight penalties per game. They rank 107th in penalties yards surrendered. That’s just not winning football, and it’s something that has to change quickly.
“You look at offensively, in particular, we total self inflicted wounds— that can be penalties, that can be unforced errors, it can be communication— our percentage is way too high,” Heupel said. It was on Saturday and it really was the week before too. So that’s why you move the ball at times but don’t have very many points. We have to clean that up. You can’t beat yourself.
“I do think you can’t let one play affect another and that certainly happened in the course of the first half in particular.”
Tennessee does have a big lingering injury that would help this issue, at least up front offensively. Getting center Cooper Mays back will be an obvious boost, whenever that happens.
Gerald Mincey update
“We just decided not to play him on the offensive side of the ball,” Heupel said. “We just made that decision.”
You knew you weren’t going to get much here. Mincey did not play on offense, but he did take snaps on special teams. It seems like it’s a simple as this — Mincey was cited last Thursday night for simple possession, and his punishment was being held out of the offense. JJ Crawford struggled in his place, and Tennessee didn’t want to change up things on special teams, where they likely haven’t built as much depth as they have on offense.
Will he play against UTSA? That’s either to be determined, or Heupel isn’t willing to say.
“We have a long week here,” Heupel answered. “We’ll go through the week.”
Why didn’t Dylan Sampson play?
Considering how much Sampson had played in the first two weeks, his absence on Saturday night was particularly notable. Sampson took to social media to voice his frustration after the game.
Heupel admitted that Sampson was dealing with a minor injury, but he could have still played.
“He was (available),” Heupel confirmed. “He’s been a little nicked up but he was available. We had plans of having him in the rotation and I think on both sides of the football the flow of the game, in particular in the first half, probably we didn’t rotate the way we anticipated going into the football game and probably as much as we needed to too.”
We saw Tennessee roll with two backs for the most part of last year, and the staff went right back to that plan in the first game of conference play. Will that continue?
Offensive line play
Center Cooper Mays didn’t play on Saturday night after Josh Heupel spent most of the week sounding very optimistic about his chances. His absence, plus no Gerald Mincey, was a big issue for Tennessee. Those problems, along with the mental errors, have to be fixed quickly or SEC play is going to be a big struggle.
“At the end of the day, just not as consistent as we needed them to be,” Heupel said. “And that’s really the entire offensive unit. I thought the wide receivers took a step in the right direction from how they had performed the previous weeks but collectively as a group just not as consistent as we need to be to go on the road to pla
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