Tennessee held its walk through inside the Anderson Training Center early Thursday morning as it prepares for its season opener against Virginia in two days.

The No. 12 Vols are making their final preparations for the Cavaliers and third year head coach Josh Heupel provided some insight into how the team will look when they take the field at Nissan Stadium in Nashville on Saturday at noon ET (TV: ABC).

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"You get done with training camp, you start your preparation this past week, you can feel that it's time to go hit somebody else," Heupel said. "You're looking at 20 practices during the course of training camp, so they're certainly ready to go play. All of the work we've put in since January is for these opportunities here and this is a special one.

"It's the opener, really good opponent, plus it's unique that we're opening up in Nashville in front of a bunch of our fans."

Here are the takeaways.

Tennessee will debut a number of new players on the offensive side of the ball on Saturday.

Though the Vols return nearly all of their run production from a year ago in running backs Jabari Small, Jaylen Wright and Dylan Sampson, a pair of freshman may have an opportunity to see the field against Virginia.

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"All those guys are going to play a bunch," Heupel said. "That's true this week and that's true throughout the course of the season. Sometimes you get into the second half of things and you end up feeding one guy. Inevitably in this game though, at that position, guys get nicked up or whatever it might be, so we'll go with the guy that's fresh and ready to play at the highest level."

Small and Wright were listed as the top two backs on the depth chart earlier this week while Sampson was in the No. 3 spots and Cam Seldon was fourth. Seldon will also help handle kick return duties.

The coaching staff emphasized situational football in each of Tennessee's two fall camp scrimmages and Heupel indicated he wanted to see improvement there.

The Vols excelled in a late-game situation against Alabama and according to Heupel, quarterback Joe Milton III was put into similar positions in both scrimmages and in practice.

WATCH ON VOLREPORT: Josh Heupel previews Tennessee football's opening game

He has since seen improvement, seeing it now as an area of strength.

"During the course of scrimmages, a ton of situational football that you get into, in particular the second one," Heupel said. "We still work on a lot of those situations. (We) feel like we've cleaned some of those things up. I wasn't concerned on where we were at based on that second scrimmage. There's always things you're concerned about. Feel really good about where we're at right now."

Virginia head coach Tony Elliot named transfer Tony Muskett as the Cavaliers' starting quarterback two weeks ago.

Muskett will be making his Power Five debut against Tennessee but brings experience after playing the last three seasons at the FCS level at Monmouth where he passed for nearly 2,000 yards, 17 touchdowns and eight interceptions in 2022.

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Muskett also provides the first test for Tennessee's defense, which will feature some new pieces up front as it looks to improve in pass rush.

"(Muskett) is a guy that has played at a really high level," Heupel said. "Transferring in to a little bit of a new system, I anticipate his experience, he'll be ready to play at a really high level. For us, we've got to do a great job of affecting the run game, eliminating that on normal downs and try to get (Virginia) into third-and-long situations."

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