Tennessee (4-4, 2-3 SEC) returns to action in Week 10 following an open date.
The Vols will play at Kentucky (6-2, 4-2 SEC) Saturday (7 p.m. EDT, ESPN2).
Ahead of Saturday’s contest, Tennessee offensive coordinator and tight ends coach Alex Golesh provided his evaluation of the Vols’ offense through eight games this season.
“Offensively, I feel like situational football we’ve gotten better and better,” Golesh said. “I think last week (against Alabama) we hit a hurdle there. I think part of that is the opponent, I think part of it is just as a whole how we played, but I think situational football wise we’ve done a good job in terms of red zone, third down. I think the biggest things I was anxious about in August was, our offensive is in, how are we able to play situationally? I think for us to be successful here in these last four weeks, that’s got to continue to improve. I think Week 3, Week 4, we finally kind of settled in on our personnel. I wish we had gotten there faster. We obviously didn’t and I think that cost us early. Obviously as a team we’ve moved on, but I think when you look back at what you’ve done and the body of work and truly have time to self-scout and look at what actually is good – I think from a personnel standpoint, us going and figuring our who our best 11 are, playing those guys and kind of living and dying with them. I think as a whole for us to continue to get better the situational football part has got to continue to be where it is. Obviously, you want to improve from a third down perspective. Continuing for us to be able to pick up our first first down, that’s really when you’ve seen us be able to play at the tempo we want to play. When we’ve been able to pick up a first down, we’ve generally had success on the drive in terms of scoring points. It’s when we’ve stalled out on first and second down that we’ve really stumbled and had to punt the football. I think the reduction in penalties from early on in the year, the reduction in turnovers, our defense has helped us drastically in the last five or six weeks, us not turning the football over the last five or six weeks at the rate we were early in the season.
“I think all of that comes with continuity, all of that comes with getting your best players on the field, settling in at the quarterback spot, all of that has kind of come together where we hit our stride. Like I said, the game a week ago, you could argue (we) probably took a step back, but for us to be able to move forward (we have to) be able to play penalty free football, and I’m talking pre-snap penalties. Those in-play penalties will happen. Aggressive penalties will happen, but it’s the false starts, the pre-snap alignment things I feel like we’ve cleaned up since guys have gotten more comfortable in the system and the pace of play. We’ve been able to get faster and faster as we’ve gone. Really proud of where we’re at, obviously huge four games (left). We’ve got to continue to grow, and this is when you find out what teams are all about is this last month in November. We’ve challenged our guys to finish the way you’re supposed to finish.”
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