It's finally the Third Saturday in October.

To kick off the week, Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel met with the media.

Here's what he said before the Vols meet Alabama inside Neyland Stadium.

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM

Another huge contest here for us, rivalry game, and college football is as good as it gets here with these two teams playing. So looking forward to seeing our fans on Saturday and need a great week of practice preparation. Really good football team that we're playing. Talented, as everybody knows. Ability to make explosive plays on the offensive side of the football. Starts with their quarterback, him being a part of the run game and then play makers out on the the outside. And defensively, personnel wise, they look like they always do, big and strong up front and second level can run and third level is extremely athletic. So huge task for us. We gotta continue to get better and get ready to go play really good football.

Certainly there's big plays out there that we're a little bit off on, but even just the run game, some of our pass game, that's not vertically down the football field, we're close on things. 11 guys gotta fully operate as one. And the good thing is we have guys that can do it. We have guys that have already done it before. We gotta prepare the right way, practice really well and take some steps, but we're fully capable of being more efficient than we were.

Keenan had an injury, ACL, and will be done for the season. Keenan, said it after the game, there's nobody that represents Tennessee better than him. You know, he is a great leader and will continue to be that inside of our building. Just, heartbroken for him and his family. Guy that does absolutely everything right and a special player, but special person too.He's got a great future.

Execution, winning on blocks when they're isolated. You know, communication and targeting the right thing. We gotta settle into the football game a little bit better early in the football game and, again, that's something that we're fully capable of.

A little bit off on the throw, you know, Squirrel's really close, make him bend outside a little bit off of it. The safety was a little bit tighter to it than anticipated, but all in all, wide receivers, quarterback, we gotta make it right and you gotta hit some of those plays.

Kalen is, just not a lot of us from South Dakota, but anyways, knew of him when I was younger and through his coaching career, he is just somebody that has stayed in contact with at times. And got great respect for him and what he's done throughout his career and how he handles himself.

Well, I think for every player, not just a quarterback, you've heard me say this, you gotta play the next play independently, the next week independently, too. You know, we started extremely fast. We have the turnover, get behind the chains a couple times there in first quarter, early second quarter with penalties, some self-inflicted wounds, things that we can control and be smarter in. I thought for a second maybe just offensively we weren't playing with the same aggressiveness that we came out early in the football game with for us settling in. We got a bunch of guys that have played at a high level and have made plays and Nico has played well. He hasn't played his best football the last couple of weeks. Let's go prepare and practice and go play the next game, the next play with an aggressive mentality. And there's a lot of things that he did well in the football game, too, so just gotta continue to grow.

I don't have concerns about him pressing, you know, he's prideful. It matters to him. He wants to perform well not for himself, but for the guys around him. And let's go have a great week and be ready to go play really good football. When you play quarterback, it's not gonna be perfect. Everybody wants it to be, it wasn't for Hendon Hooker, any of the guys that that we've had being resilient, coming back and playing with great confidence, which he will, and poise will lead you to the plays that are gonna present themselves.

Some of them, he's absolutely right on some of them, he's got an opportunity to deliver a ball. Can the pocket be cleaner while he is trying to deliver it? Yeah, offensive football, 11 guys gotta operate together. You know, there's times the o-line's doing a really good job and we're not doing a good job at running back or vice versa. For Nico, being calm, poised, being in a great platform to be able to deliver the football on time is important, but a part of his game and part of what we need is when it's not right down the football field to be able to scramble and make plays.

Man, this rivalry has been around a long time before Nick Saban was a part of it or I was a part of it. The magnitude of this rivalry is the historical nature and what it's meant inside of this league.

He is been extremely accurate with the football. Been a pretty sound decision maker I think while you're trying to apply pressure to him, right? So those guys don't have all day to run around on the second and third level. You have to be mindful and not let him escape. His athleticism when he does escape is special. And so, you put all those pieces together, you gotta do a great job of having rush integrity, getting off a block, making a play when he tucks it.

Well, (Jeremiah Telander), he's played a bunch throughout the course of the season. Played really the entire football game the other night. Everybody's got great confidence in him, but the other guys as well defensively played extremely well. Gap integrity, communication was solid. There's a couple things that we weren't right on. We can clean those things up, but all in all, have great confidence in all of those guys.

He's somebody that we plan on using more. A couple weeks ago, structural change, you know, Miles (Kitselman) got a majority of it. We got great confidence in him, we'll continue to play moving forward.

I wouldn't say there's anything different in his effort, strain. There's been a few more times where he has had an opportunity to make the play and he has made the play, but he's played really well all year long. So a couple huge plays in the game the other night, you know, things that you don't take for granted but expect him to make and he's played really well. So within the structure of what we're doing, assignment sound and playing at a really high level.

I haven't finalized that. Could be Arion, could be Telander that that takes that over.

I don't think we will expand him to play a bunch of tight end. That was something that we thought gave us an advantage in short-yard situations the other night and he and Jaxson (Moi) both performed really well within it.

At times, just not consistent enough. Five guys operating as one. A lot of times we had four operating as one. That's how we clean it up and be more efficient in what we're doing up front.

We've played some of those guys. Throughout the course of it, have rotated there and feel good about all of those guys that you've seen in action already, you know, Kalib (Perry) and Jalen (Smith), those guys will continue to play.

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