Midweek Updates

Photo Credit: Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics

On this bye week, we'll briefly preview the Vols' matchup with Auburn on October 13 and review Pruitt's remarks from his Wednesday press conference. We will also discuss how Alvin Kamara is impacting the NFL and celebrate Knoxville's birthday!

Knoxville's Birthday

Today, on October 3, the city of Knoxville celebrates its 227th birthday! Even with it still being football season, the city is already abuzz for this year's basketball season. With Phillip Fulmer as the athletic director, Knoxville should continue to experience top-level production from all of sports at UT.

Tennessee Will Face Auburn After the Bye Week

On Tuesday, our weekly Twitter poll asked fans about their confidence that Tennessee can defeat Auburn. There were 55% of respondents that said Tennessee has a chance to win and 17% that voted for "Vols gonna get that W!" The Vols impressed with their gritty performance at Georgia. Meanwhile, Auburn defeated Southern Miss by a score of 24-13 on Saturday. There was a lengthy weather delay, but there is no excuse for this poor of a performance from a top-10 team. In fact, the Tigers did not even reach 100 rushing yards in the game. October 13 is a prime opportunity for Jeremy Pruitt to pick up a quality win in his first season.

Kamara is Shining in the NFL

Alvin Kamara played in his 20th NFL game on Sunday. He recorded 19 carries for 134 yards and 3 touchdowns, along with 5 catches for 47 yards. With this performance, he became the first player in the history of the NFL to reach 1,000 rushing yards and 1,000 receiving yards in his first 20 career games. Kamara has taken the league by storm and may very well be the best running back currently in the NFL. Just think. He wasn't even the starter at Tennessee!

Pruitt's Wednesday Press Conference

Pruitt did not meet with the media on Monday, but met with them on Wednesday evening. He began with, "We’ve had two days of full pad practice, which is a really good opportunity for a lot of guys to improve as players by going back to fundamentals on both sides of the ball. Blocking, tackling, getting some timing in the throwing game, running some real game routes the right way. Just going back to the details, lots of good one-on-one. We had an opportunity to work three groups and get some of these younger guys a lot of action. We’ll continue to do that tomorrow, we’ve prepped a little bit on some of our future opponents every day, but there’s nothing like going against each other, for the speed of the game, the competition. So, we’ve had two days of pretty good work doing that.”

Then, when asked about what he wants to see from the team during this bye week he stated, "I want to see us improve. I want to see guys that want to get better every day, that want to compete and we have tons of places that we can improve. Start with the o-line, being consistent up front, playing with an attitude, playing with the right pad level, being finishers in the run game. How many times do you see our runners running down the field and you see our offensive linemen knocking the DB’s off of them down the field? You throw the ball, get out covering up front, being consistent, no mental errors and protection. Tight ends, same deal in the run game, throw game. Running backs finishing runs. Wide receivers playing with speed, playing fast, running good routes and being consistent. If you go out here and run a snap route 100 times and you run it at eight yards every single time and you get to the game and you run it at 10, something’s not right. Just being consistent, it’s all over the board. Defensively, tackling better. I think you can work on tackling every single day and we do but some of that’s an attitude. I used to play for a guy and we didn’t work on tackling drills. This is 25 years ago... We need to improve in all areas. We need to improve in the kicking game, need to get better production in the punt return. We blocked two punts this year but not got a lot of return yardage and we should have. We’ve had some opportunities there. We can improve in all three phases and we’re trying to do that every day."

There are several things that the Vols can clean up during this week off. The team is working hard in preparation for a road matchup with Auburn. I expect them to bring high intensity on both sides of the ball, with continued improvement this week.