KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – After an inspiring performance on the road against No. 1 Alabama, a confident Tennessee team has turned its focus to yet another physical SEC opponent in South Carolina, who visits Neyland Stadium this Saturday afternoon.

“Before the game, we were always confident in our ability and our coaching staff,” freshman defensive back Jaylen McCollough said. “Seeing how we just played against them, it just raised our level of confidence even more. I feel like we can play with anybody in the country. We’re getting better each and every week. We’ve just got to continue to get better to keep gaining confidence.”

McCollough is yet another player in the Vols’ freshman class who has stepped up and made big plays this season. The Georgia native tied his career high with four tackles and also recorded his first-career sack in last Saturday’s contest against the Crimson Tide.

“We had a great play call called by Coach Ansley,” McCollough said when asked about his sack. “We’ve repped that call many times in practice and he told me ‘don’t be late.’ So, I timed it up off the snap. I got a good setup by Bryce Thompson. He set up the back. It left the hole wide open and I just took a shot.”

While the team’s confidence continues the grow by the game, UT knows that the road doesn’t get any easier in the final five games of the season.

“It’s just making sure I’m going to work every day,” junior offensive lineman Trey Smith said. “The mentality and approach stay the same. We’re going to try to execute our plays to the best of our ability.

“Anything the coaches ask us to do we are going to try to execute as well as we can. Moving forward, the standard of play doesn’t change, we just have to keep playing.”

Expect Another Close One
While the Gamecocks enter this weekend’s game with a 3-4 record, the Vols know they’re likely to be in another close game. South Carolina is coming off a close lose at home to Florida but beat then-No. 3 Georgia on the road the week prior.

“South Carolina is a great team defensively,” Smith said. “They are very stout up front, have a lot of great players, a lot of people who play hard. I have a lot of respect for that program and a lot of respect for those players. It’s going to be a hard-fought battle. It’s going to be a war on Saturday.”

The last seven meetings between Tennessee and South Carolina have been one-score games, with six of those seven contests being decided by three points or fewer.

Redshirt senior linebacker Darrell Taylor has been with the program for four of those previous meetings and knows firsthand how competitive this matchup is every year.

“This matchup is always close and always a nail biter, because they’re a good team, we’re a good team and good teams always fight it out until the very end,” Taylor said. “I think we’ll get their best game and they’re going to get ours, so I think it’s going to be a very competitive weekend and we’re going to have fun doing it.”

Jordan Stepping Up in Vols’ Backfield
Junior running back Tim Jordan has provided UT with a spark offensively over the past three weeks, leading the team with 200 yards rushing during that span.

Jordan ran for a season-high 94 yards in Saturday’s loss to the top-ranked Crimson Tide, including a career-long 33-yard rush in the second quarter.

The Bartow, Fla., native stressed the need for himself and the rest of Tennessee’s running backs to continue to play a physical brand of football.

“I know in our room, we press and talk about how physical we want to be,” Jordan said. “We want to be the most physical group on the team and I know we take pride in that.”
Jordan also credited his emergence over the past couple of weeks in large part to the improved play of the offensive line.

“I would say the preparation at practice and the offensive line, with them just gaining confidence and doing what they do,” Jordan said when asked about the team’s recent success in the ground game.

“Every day they come to practice – like everybody – fix mistakes, [make] corrections and develop every day in practice.”

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Opening statement

“When you go back and look at the film, one thing I will say is our players and coaches have done a fantastic job after a slow start to the season of sticking together, working hard and buying into the culture that we are trying to establish here. I felt like Saturday we showed really good competitive character. (We) stayed together. There was adversity during the game and our guys tried to play through it and played hard and tough. We obviously made some mistakes in the game that kept us from finishing the game off. One of the things we have to focus on is to continue to develop physicality and toughness to play together. We have to find a way to win football games. That is the bottom line.

“We put ourselves in a great opportunity through some of the adversity, but we missed out on some opportunities and it is something we need to learn from. We don’t need to let it happen again. I thought offensively, our offensive line probably played their best game. It wasn’t perfect the whole time. Our running backs ran the ball pretty well. We have to build off that and continue to improve there. We have to make some plays in the passing game, but we had a couple turnovers early in the game where we lost vertical field position. There are three times in the game that they started inside our 40-yard-line. We can’t let that happen. We did get a stop one time in the red zone. And then, we turned the ball over once in the red zone. There are a lot of things that we need to improve on and there are lots of really good things that we can build off of.

“But we have moved on. We play a really good South Carolina football team this weekend. They get turnovers on defense. You can count on coach (Will) Muschamps’ defense to be tough and be sound. They play in your face and lots of man-to-man (defense). They are really good upfront. The defensive line might be the best defensive line we have played all year. Offensively, they have lost their quarterback and have had a couple injuries there, but they have found ways. They have been stubborn running the football. They have done a really nice job doing that. They find ways to create explosive plays. They have good runners and good players on the outside. They have good kickers and good return guys in special teams. It is going to be a tremendous challenge for us.

“We have played three really physical games against good opponents in a row. We have to get ready to play another one. Neyland (Stadium) has been really an electric atmosphere this whole season. I know it will be again Saturday and it will be a huge advantage for us. We are excited about the opportunity to come back and play at home in front of a great crowd.”

On the status of Brian Maurer and if he will play this Saturday:
“I trust our medical staff. They are the ones that make the decisions like that. I meet with our players throughout the week, but it is never about any kind of medical decision. I trust our staff and right now, they are still trying to determine where he is at.”

On if Maurer will return to play this week:

“We’ll see how the week goes.”

On the similarities between himself and Will Muschamp having both worked under Nick Saban:

“We definitely worked with a lot of the same people. Me and Will have never worked together, but we’ve talked several times since I’ve been a coach here – we talked yesterday. I think his teams always play extremely hard. I think they take on his character – they’re tough, they’re physical, and they’re sound, they always give you different looks, and they win a lot of really close games. If you look at last year, there was a lot of one-score games – our game – they beat us 27-24. They found a way in, so we’re going to have our hands full with them for sure.”

On the performance of the offensive line, and the reason for the improved play:

“For one, we have guys that are starting to get used to playing together. When you talk about the combination of our offensive line, some of the injuries – Jahmir Johnson has been injured, Riley Locklear has been injured, Trey (Smith) not being able to practice, Wanya (Morris) and Darnell (Wright) just getting here, and (K’Rojhn) Calbert in there, Ryan Johnson, there’s lots of different combinations there. I think the guys are starting to play together in the same system. Now we’re getting into the end of the year here so some of the plays, they’ve had a lot of repetition doing them over and over again, so we continue to improve that. I think our backs are starting to get more comfortable with the reads and hitting the holes the right way, and there’s a lot that goes into that. I thought our offensive line had an opportunity on Saturday, especially in the second half, to take the game over. We’d gone a long drive there in the fourth quarter, and we don’t stick one in there on the one inch line, but, in that drive our offensive line took the game over, and that was good to see.”

On how he makes sure his team gets past the inevitable obstacles such as officiating:

“I’ll be the first to tell you that I fully support Steve Shaw and everything that goes about this. It’s a tough job, a very tough job. Things happen really fast; there are probably three or four things that happened during the game that I’m complaining to the officials about, and I was wrong. When I went back and watched the tape, they were right and I was wrong. There’re probably three or four other things that happened in that game that I don’t agree with. There’s nothing that Steve could tell me, or anyone else could tell me that I would agree with whether it was a flag on us or not a flag on us. We make mistakes as coaches, and they’re going to make mistakes as officials. Players make mistakes, we all do, nobody’s perfect. There’re a few critical plays in that game, and I’m not saying it would’ve changed the outcome of that game, and there was probably some against us too, but unfortunately, we’re all held accountable. From the accountability standpoint, it’s tough. What are the repercussions here? The call on Darrell Taylor was absolutely not a penalty. Would it change the game? I don’t know. I know they would punt instead of going on and scoring that possession. Could they have gone and scored the next possession? Sure. There are a couple of things in there where I felt like they took shots on our quarterback, absolutely. Their kids are playing hard just like our kids did, but we got a couple of targeting calls in the last two weeks. The officials in the game, they throw one. If it gets overruled in Birmingham, or from the replay booth, or whatever – just the consistency there. It’s a tough deal for everybody involved, and accountability is even tougher, but for our players, we’re moving on. There’s nothing we can do about last week. We had 60 minutes to do that. As coaches, as players, we all contributed to the loss. I though our players played extremely hard, and tried to do exactly what we wanted them to do. We have to execute at a higher level, and do a better job as a coaching staff to give them an opportunity to do that and we’ll start today to fix that. “

On if he was given an explanation from the officials on any of the big calls in the game:

“I think there was a penalty on one of them or a spot on the stopping of the clock. They’re trying to get it right, the officials are trying to get it right, just like when I wake up in the morning and I walk out there, I’m not saying, ‘I want to make a mistake as a coach today”, or a player, nobody operates that way. So, we’re all trying to get it right, and it’s a tough game to manage, but there’s certain things that can be overturned, and there’s certain things like where we get a holding call in the red area, actually two holding calls in the red area, and hey, maybe we held, but you know what, you can call holding every single play in college football. We also got a lineman downfield penalty in the red area, and every RPO that’s out there, there are guys five to seven yards downfield on every play that somebody throws an RPO, which is really what the game has become. Our guy was five yards downfield blocking a guy. So, like I said before, the inconsistencies, the accountability repercussion of what really goes into it, it’s a tough deal. But everybody is trying to do their best to make our game the best it possibly can be.”

On the targeting call on Daniel Bituli and how some of the younger linebackers responded to more playing time:

“To me, where Daniel got thrown out of the game for targeting, I think it was targeting, he hit the guy with the crown of his helmet. I don’t know where he hit him at, but it doesn’t matter, and I really don’t know what I could tell Daniel to do any differently because the guy was six inches off of the ground, and it’s hard to go from here to there without hitting him there. So, it is what it is, but there are also rules to it where, in my opinion, there were probably a couple of other targeting plays in the game that weren’t called, and that’s what I don’t understand because that goes back to the replay booth to protect the game. So, we’ll see. I feel like Q (Quavaris Crouch) played really hard, he’s learning a new position, and J.J. (Peterson) for the first time got out there, and he was a little bit all over the place, but he ran around and made a few tackles.”

On the difference in the defensive line and their improvement over the last few weeks:

“We’re getting a little more experience, if you look at the group, a lot of them weren’t here in the spring or this is their first year to play here, like Greg Emerson this is his first year to play he redshirted last year, Darrell Middleton just got here, Aubrey Solomon’s first year to play here, Kurott Garland and some these guys were redshirted, but they’re going to get better the more they play and I think it goes back to how hard they’ve worked at practice, it goes back to our coaches getting them to buy in and continue to work hard, and they’ve gotten better every week.”

On if the guys are finally starting to get glimpses of what good football looks like and doing things right:

“You look at this past week, Alabama’s really good, and sometimes based off their ability and the things that their doing they cause you to make mistakes and sometimes we make mistakes, the one thing we got to do as a team is eliminate the self -inflicted wounds, we got to eliminate our mistakes, and make the other team always beat us. Does that make sense? That’s something we’ve tried to focus on, that’s when we talk about playing clean, I mean it’s hard enough to guard these guys, but when you’re supposed to be playing cover-2 and the safety doesn’t get a half, they’re going to have success, because there’s lots of times you can do it exactly right and these guys make throws and catches and there’s not a whole lot you can do with it, and we had a couple of those in the game and we got to eliminate things like that.”

On managing the game plan for Saturday based on Brian Maurer’s uncertainty with his health, and if he is going to practice today:

“Well we’ll get the other guys ready to play; it’s no different than pretty much what we’ve done every week, whoever is going to be the starter takes the majority of the reps so we’ll get those other guys ready to go and we’ll know in the next couple of days about Brian (Maurer); I’ve not talked to our medical staff about where he’s at today yet, but we’re going to get the other guys ready.”

On going back to the Bama game and looking at the 4th-and-1 play on the goal line with Jarrett Guarantano, and if he had a chance to go back and see it on film, and if he has talked to Jarrett:

“We talked about it yesterday, it’s pretty obvious what happened, it’s over with and we’ve moved on, lots of mistakes that were made in that game, I made more than anybody on our sideline, and we got to do a better job as coaches and players where we don’t make mistakes, again this is a really good football team, and we played them really tough, but we got to find a way to execute and win in the end, and that’s something we really got to focus on, and that’s one play in the game, there were lots of plays in the game, whether we didn’t play a guy man-to-man, or didn’t get a half, or heck maybe I should’ve onside kicked one. There’re lots of decisions that happened in the game that could’ve changed the course of the game, but that was one play, unfortunately it was an important play, but we’re moving on now.”

On the progress South Carolina has made over the last few games:

“There isn’t a lot of difference in most of the teams in the league. It’s a very competitive league. It probably comes down to execution, turnovers and all of the little things. There are good coaches at all of the schools, there are good players at all of the schools. Maybe some have more depth than others, maybe some years there’re things that could affect the team, whether it’s injuries or whatever. But it all goes back to the details. I think they’re playing really hard on both sides of the ball and they beat a really good Georgia team a couple weeks ago and have played a couple of tough opponents in a row, but I think they’re playing really good football right now.”

On the trust he and the staff have in Jarrett Guarantano:

“We trust all of our players. That’s one thing we work hard to build. It goes back to you wanting to rep something so many times that you never get in wrong and that’s something that we try to do with all of our positions. Sometimes it comes down to decision making and every position. Coaches have to earn players’ trust and players have to earn coaches’ trust — it goes hand in hand. Jarrett is a guy, I’ve said many times before, that I believe in. I think he has what it takes, but I do think that he needs to be more consistent with the right intangibles so that he can play at a little higher level. He knows that, we talked yesterday. You look at that game, there were three of four times during the game where if you talk about standing in the pocket and making throws, he did a really nice job. That game is over with, we have to learn from it and move on. I said after the Georgia game that he would help us win some games this year, and he did last week against Mississippi State. He’s a guy that is going to continue to go to work. Me and him have a relationship where I’m going to coach him hard — I’m going to coach all of our players hard — but he’s a guy that I believe in and I haven’t wavered in that.”

On lack of depth at certain positions:

“It’s definitely hard to rep three quarterbacks. I mean you can get them a few reps, but they have to take a lot of mental reps. You have to be ready when your time is called and it’s really at every position. We have guys like Solon Page, who, three weeks ago, probably didn’t think he was going to playing against Alabama on third down in a one-score game. Jerome Carvin is a guy that has played really good football the last two weeks, a guy that we were considering three and half or four weeks ago possibly for a redshirt. So you never know what’s going to happen, there’s a lot of football left and you never know when your number is going to be called, so you have to prepare for it every single day because it’s going to be called.”

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