{"id":378035,"date":"2025-12-30T15:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T15:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/378035\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T15:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T15:05:09","slug":"josh-heupel-previews-tennessee-illinois-music-city-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/378035\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Heupel previews Tennessee-Illinois Music City Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything Tennessee Football<\/a> head coach\u00a0Josh Heupel<\/a>\u00a0said during his press conference<\/a> on Monday in his final press conference previewing the Music City Bowl against Illinois (5:30 p.m. Eastern Time, ESPN<\/a>) at Nissan Stadium in Nashville:<\/p>\n

Opening Statement<\/p>\n

\u201cWant to thank Scott Ramsey and the Music City Bowl staff. They\u2019ve done a great job of hosting. It\u2019s our second time here, continues to get better, but they\u2019ve done a great job creating an experience for our entire program, our players with events throughout the course of the week, and have done a great job of taking care of our families as well. Really excited that we have an opportunity to play in this game. Great month of preparation, and get a chance to go out and play a really good opponent in Illinois.\u00a0Got great respect for Coach Bielema, what he\u2019s done at Illinois, but really throughout his entire coaching career. Tough, smart, physical football team, and looking forward to going out and competing with our guys tomorrow in Nissan Stadium. A great venue for us to play and get a chance to do it in front of our home state, and looking forward to seeing the right shade of orange out there in big numbers tomorrow. So I\u2019ll open it up for some questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes this an intriguing bowl matchup<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, it\u2019s two programs that are playing at a really high level and I think the fact that it\u2019s Big 10-SEC\u2014 two of the best conferences in the, in the country, it\u2019s style and brand of football. The physicality that will be out there and you look at the quarterback play on both sides of the football. You got dynamic playmakers that are experienced, that play extremely smart and efficient. I think it\u2019s got a chance to be a really good football game tomorrow afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

What stands out about Illinois quarterback Luke Altmeyer<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s got great command of what they\u2019re doing offensively. Plays extremely efficiently, very good, quick decision maker with the ball in his hands, pushing it down the football field. Their ability to run the football into heavy play action pass and push it down the field. Has been accurate in that way, but he\u2019s got the athleticism to be a part of the run game as well. And it\u2019s not a heavy load of what they do, but certainly situationally and field zone wise, he becomes the extra hat and they turn the numbers into their favor.\u00a0Got great respect for him and what he\u2019s done during the course\u00a0of his career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why the Music City Bowl is important for the Tennessee program<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the landscape of college football, of the expansion of the playoff certainly has changed the dynamics a little bit, but at the end of the day, for us as a program, this is an entire month where you get a chance to continue to grow and compete, develop your players that are on your roster. In a lot of ways it\u2019s a finish to this season for this program, this staff, this group of players, but it\u2019s also a springboard before you get back in January for all of your young players. Fundamentals, technique, growth in the scheme, opportunity.\u00a0 You have some guys that are look looking forward to the draft, right? That may not play. So all of a sudden there\u2019s more opportunities for some of those young guys to go out and play. And, for us, when we were in this game four years ago, Jayon Hyatt\u2014 I told this story to our local media. Great story, had some success, but a little bit of up and down in our first season with him.\u00a0His growth during the month of December knew he would play extremely well in this game, but it was really a springboard to his following season, his work habits, his attention to detail. His growth in fundamentals and technique. And that\u2019s a guy that ultimately ends up winning the Biletnikoff Award\u2014\u00a0the best wide receiver in the country the following year.\u00a0So it\u2019s an opportunity to have growth on the football side of it, but it\u2019s also a part of building connection with the guys who are going be back. It\u2019s an opportunity to come to the city outside of your home campus, have great experiences.\u00a0These are memories are going to last a lifetime. As somebody that played this game, you remember these opportunities together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tennessee interim defensive coordinator William Inge impacting the bowl week prep<\/p>\n

\u201cCoach Inge, our entire defensive staff have done a great job. When we first got back on the field, slowly introducing the game plan.\u00a0\u00a0But meat and potatoes, things that guys have had experiences in and have great command but subtle tweaks and bring in some things that maybe he\u2019s done in his past at Washington or other places for this preparation. And I think we\u2019ve really grown throughout the course of the month and what our expectations are for this ball game.\u00a0Understanding the opponent, situational football and getting dialed into the details of the game plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

If any young Tennessee players have had a month of practice similar to Jalin Hyatt in 2021<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to say anything today. Hopefully after the ball game I\u2019m able to talk about somebody, but I do think there\u2019s been a group of guys, young guys that I\u2019ve talked to just during the prep that I\u2019ve really liked their focus, their attention to detail and how they\u2019ve approached it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illinois being 0-4 in games in which its opponents have completed 70% of passes<\/p>\n

\u201cTomorrow it\u2019ll be interesting to see the style of play defensively that Illinois wants to play early in the football game, different personnel groupings from them, a lot of different structures. For us, quarterback understanding the structures that he see in our wide receivers, recognizing that man-zone principles, being in the right spot and pass protection being really good up front as well. And so it\u2019ll take all those factors working together to be as efficient as we need to against a really good Illinois defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

His assessment of Bret Bielema over the course of his career<\/p>\n

\u201cBeen in the same conference, been in different conferences at times. Faced each other before. I think his football teams are always extremely physical. Great defenses that are fundamentally sound, don\u2019t give up a bunch of big plays. I think he pairs his three phases of the game together extremely well. There\u2019s an identity inside of their program of how they want to play and how they want to attack people every Saturday and does a great job of getting all the staff his entire program on the same page.\u00a0And that\u2019s led to the amount of success that he\u2019s had. And you look at the success that he\u2019s had here at Illinois, it\u2019s not shocking to anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a plan to get Tennessee freshman QB George MacIntyre reps in this game<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll just kind of see how the game unfolds and what the identity of the game is. Nothing where we\u2019re planning on putting him in second series or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s an advantage of having played in Nissan Stadium in the past<\/p>\n

\u201cOur staff has a lot of familiarity with it. As rosters have turned over, there\u2019s a lot of guys that have never been inside of that stadium. We were here four years ago for a bowl game a couple years ago for our season opener. We have some familiarity with it, but a lot of our players, a majority of our players have never been inside of it. So opportunity for us to be inside of a big-time stadium, a great venue, have a lot of our fans there, so everybody\u2019s excited to play and you get a chance to go finish the season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everything Tennessee Football head coach\u00a0Josh Heupel\u00a0said during his press conference on Monday in his final press conference previewing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,4504,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-378035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-regwall","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}