Everything Willie Martinez Said Ahead of Tennessee vs. Vanderbilt

The Tennessee Volunteers defeated the Florida Gators and are now in a position to play spoiler to Vanderbilt's playoff hopes. They will look to ruin that in their annual senior day contest.

Ahead of the contest against Vanderbilt, multiple players took the stand along with some coaches. One of the coaches who took the stand is Willie Martinez, who spoke with the media. Here is what he had to say.

Martinez Details What Vanderbilt Offers Under Diego Pavia

"You can see the experience, you can see the continuity of the guys that played last year. Pavia is directing it. He’s a heck of a player, and you can see the confidence, you can see the execution. They look like they’re throwing the ball a little bit more than they did last year and opening up their offense, for the most part. They just do a great job of executing. I mean, they’re doing similar plays, different formations here and there, but in the end of it, it’s just the execution as a group. They’ve been very consistent, and it all starts with the guy who’s got the ball, right. And he’s doing a great job of leading. And you can see that obviously in their success that they’ve had moving forward the entire season."

Martinez on Pavia's Ability to Run The Ball

"Yeah, he does a lot of great things off schedule. Like the, like we like to say, you know, where it doesn’t go in quite exactly how, you know, you’re, you’re practicing it from a standpoint of defending a certain route, and then obviously you can get creative from there. You don’t want to lose containment, as the pass rush lanes, or, and he can be very deadly because he can run on the ball and he can throw the ball, you know, on the run, you know, and for us, you just gotta play disciplined ball. I mean, basically it’s gonna sound the same thing, but doing our job and, and knowing that there’s an elite player at the quarterback position that can actually do things. You can run the ball as he breaks out the pocket or you can throw it, stay on your guys and being disciplined until you cross the last scrimmage because he’s done a great job of being very creative on the perimeter, you know, behind the last scrimmage, and either keeping it, throwing it, you know, so you gotta be disciplined."

Martinez on Only Allowing a Couple of Touchdowns

"Yeah, the credit goes to the players. It’s been happening the last three or four weeks. You can see the happening where the confidence level and I think the young with the experienced players, you know what I mean? The young guys who have gotten more reps and the communication has been really solid. It starts there, knowing what to do and what we’re gonna check to. It is gonna happen from our back end the most because the safeties have gotta make those checks and those calls along with the star, we’ve just been playing better as a group. I think the communication has been really good, you know what I mean? And obviously, that made a bunch of plays that we weren’t making earlier in the season."

For the remainder of what Martinez had to say click HERE.