What Josh Heupel Had To Say About Tennessee vs. Vanderbilt

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel spoke with the media following Tennessee's regular-season finale and a 24-point win over rival Vanderbilt. Read on to see what he has to say.

Heupel starts the press conference with his opening statement. "Start off by saying thank you to the men and women who serve our country. Obviously, today was a salute to service across the country, and everybody in our program is very thankful for the sacrifices that men and women make and their families make." He then follows that up by saying, "Senior day. I am really proud of this group. A lot of them were here when I first got here and chose to stay here through some uncertainty. Bought into what our vision of the program could and would be about. It's a phenomenal group."

Joe Milton III performed well against the Commodores, and many would say it was his greatest game ever. Heupel states, "Proud of his resiliency to continue, prepare to fight. He competed extremely well. He was really good throughout the course of the football game. Decisive was in the right spot." He also states, "Smart decision-making, accurate with the football. Guys out on the perimeter are doing a great job. Offensive line doing their job to protect him, you put all of that together, and football opportunities in the red zone, and he's got a really special night."

Heupel also talked about the tight ends Jacob Warren and McCallan Castles. Heupel goes on to say, "Jacob Warren has been such an integral part in the building of this program, his leadership in particular, the last couple of years. I don't think you can overstate a guy that it means everything to wear the Power T and to play and compete. He chose to come for his sixth year. McCallan is new to the program, fully invested, bought into everything you know, a guy that prepares extremely hard, which means everything he wants to perform is not for himself but for the guys around him, you know, and just continue to get better throughout the course of the year. Both are extremely unselfish players. They'd rather see the other guy catch a touchdown than themselves and two dynamic players. They had a good night tonight."

Heupel also felt impressed with how his offensive line group performed. When asked about the offensive line, he responded, "Proud of the effort from the offensive line; obviously, that group was extremely beat up."

It wasn't the best rushing night for the Volunteer backs, but there were some positives. "It wasn't extremely efficient early on in the football game. We picked up some yards, but the perimeter plays off of the run game were really big. Jaylen Wright, I don't think anybody's mentioned going over 1,000 yards this year. He played extremely well. Jabari [Small] averaged 7.5 on four carries. There were some big plays, and there were some efficient plays at the end of the day. I mean, look at the group that's out there continuing to compete, and I'm talking about the five offensive linemen and tight ends. There are a lot of positive things."

Ramel Keyton also had a great game as he went for over 100 yards receiving and two touchdowns on the night after a couple of overwhelming moments throughout the season. Heupel praised the way Keyton played by saying, "Yeah, I'm proud of Ramel. Probably late in the year, y'all guys got a sense that he wasn't 100% early in the year. Just continues to fight and compete. A year ago, he stepped up in a huge way when Cedric [Tillman] went down. This year hasn't always been perfect for him, but he's a guy who competes and practices extremely hard, and to go finish it inside of Neyland Stadium the way he did tonight was awesome to see."

The game got intense as it got to a point in which the benches cleared, and an all-out brawl appeared for a few moments. Heupel was asked about everything going on and stated, "Yeah, addressed it, tried to address it on the sidelines too, and talked to this coaching staff as well, and it did. It got chippy there for a while. We talked about it at halftime while playing smart football, but we didn't necessarily do that. We had more penalties than we wanted."

Ollie Lane was also a name the Tennessee head coach seemed impressed with throughout his performance. Ollie was forced to step in the place of an injured Cooper Mays early on in the game and did not disappoint. "He's a great example of a guy who means everything to be inside of this program, does it the right way, and cares about his teammates. Came back for another year. He's been thrown in at guard, you know. I think in our first year when we got here this year, he played a little bit of everything, and he's a huge part of the success of this football team. Guys like that never get the recognition that they should. He means a lot inside that O-line room but to this football team, too.

Nico Iamaleava had the opportunity to appear in the Vanderbilt game and impressed Heupel. "I thought he did a really good job, you know, off of our run game, throwing the ball out on the perimeter. He was accurate and decisive. When we pushed it down the field, just a normal drop-back liked to pitch the speed option. Did a good job steeping through the tackle, but all in all, really good job."

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