KNOXVILLE — Tennessee took to Haslam field Tuesday for its eighth practice ahead of the 2020 season, kicking off week No. 3 of fall training camp.
Following practice, third-year Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt discussed his team on a Zoom call with reporters.
“This is the third week of preseason practice, eighth practice,” Pruitt said. “We had a little heat out there today, which was good for us, we haven’t had a whole lot this fall camp. I thought our guys pushed through it pretty well. We continue to get to work on special teams, which has been a priority because we had several days we had to go inside. Just the ball handling aspect — snappers, holders, kickers — just having an opportunity to continue to work that in live situations. Handling the ball in the back end, we feel like we’ve got some guys that have really good ability in the return game, but No. 1 priority is securing the ball.
“I still feel like offensively, I feel like our offensive line continues to improve every day, getting more and more guys that are playing at the right pad level, eliminating mental errors. One thing we’ve got to do is we got to be more aggressive up front defensively. We’re not creating enough negative plays. We’ve got to continue to improve on that. We’ve got to be able to get the ball out on defense.”
Tennessee will kick off the 2020 season Sept. 26 at South Carolina. The game is slated to start at 7:30 p.m. ET and will be televised by SEC Network.