Tennessee football preseason camp is right around the corner. Vols head coach Josh Heupel addressed the media at the annual SEC Media Days, hosted in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday.

Here are three important takeaways from Heupel’s availability.  

Handling outside noise

Ask any Tennessee fan you know how many wins they expect Josh Heupel and Tennessee football to garner in 2022 and they’ll likely tell you at least nine.

Tennessee isn’t on the level of Alabama and Georgia yet. Those fans understand that. However, a Tennessee team that won eight games last season with close losses to Purdue, Ole Miss and Pitt is expected to win those games in year 2.

Heupel knows that. What’s important to him is not letting those expectations derail the work the team is doing internally.

“I don’t want to be anywhere where there isn’t hunger to be better, the expectations are never going to be higher outside of the building than they are inside the building,” Heupel said. “Getting our kids to understand and not soak in the outside noise, they’re going to hear it, they’re going to see it, but it can’t change the way that you strain your focus and go about your daily habits.”

In short, Tennessee football is working on controlling what they can control. The Vols have seemingly 50/50 matchups against LSU, Pitt and Kentucky on the horizon. The Vols are also expected to beat Florida, a team under a new head coach heading into this season.

Third down improvement

Heupel noted a lot of positive attributes from Tennessee’s defense last season, most notably tackles for loss. He also admitted what was obvious upon rewatch – the Vols have to improve in some areas if they are to compete for an SEC Championship anytime soon.

“We gotta be better in third-and-long situations, you’re playing where you want to defensively when you’re in that position,” Heupel said. “We gotta get better in the red zone too, forcing field goals and create negatives there and not giving up seven points. A part of that is being able to affect the quarterback, not just with pressures but a 4-man rush. We’ve got to have some competition on the defensive line. I think we’ve gained a depth inside our program”

And that depth is important to any rebuild. The Vols entered fall camp last season with just 69 scholarship player and will do so this season with north of 85, per Heupel.

Recruiting: Now and then

Have you heard about this whole NIL thing?

Well, it changed some things around the college football landscape. Even with NIL being used as a recruiting tool today, Heupel doesn’t see it as Tennessee’s greatest asset on the road to guiding Tennessee back to the top of the SEC.

“The landscape of recruiting from UT now is so dramatically different,” Heupel said. “Uncertainty when we first got there, the steady ground that we’re on and the trajectory that our program is currently at.”

The competitive nature, the energy the connection you can see when our players play. Now you’re not talking about what you’re going to do, recruits have had an opportunity to see it. Now the greatest resource and tool we have in recruiting is our student athletes.”

There are plenty of stories of players on Tennessee’s roster that serve as an example to new recruits how development works under the new regime. Cedric Tillman and Hendon Hooker are perfect example of guys that saw lesser roles blossom into superstar roles in seemingly a few weeks.

Recruits see that progress and want to hop on board. Heupel’s point can be proven by Tennessee’s recent success on the recruiting trail. As of now, the Vols have a top 10 class in the 2023 cycle and show no signs of slowing down as national signing day slowly but surely approaches.