Tennessee football meets Texas A&M Saturday afternoon at Neyland Stadium in a critical SEC matchup for both program.
Both teams enter the matchup with one loss a piece in SEC play and desperately need wins to remain in the SEC Championship race.
Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher met with the College Station media Monday afternoon and recapped the Aggies loss to Alabama last week and began to preview their road trip to Tennessee.
The pressure is mounting on Fisher after a disappointing 2022 season and an up-and-down 4-2 (2-1 SEC) start to the season. Here’s everything Fisher said about Tennessee Monday to open up game week.
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On what stands out about Tennessee
“They’re a very good team. Getting into them, offensively, they have a three back system. 0 (Jaylen Wright), 2 (Jabari Small) and 6 (Dylan Sampson), the running backs, all have juice. They’re strong and you think of them as fast but they’re 210-15 pounds. Those guys are all really good players. The receiver, 10 (Squirrel White), he’s got juice. Squirrel, he looks like a squirrel trying to get a hold of that guy, but he plays physical for a guy that’s a 165-70 pounds. He can run. The receivers outside are tall. Milton is hard to get on the ground. I remember him from high school. He was a Florida kid in Orlando when he came out. He’s big and he’s strong and I’ll tell you what you’ll see in that game, when he throws deep balls— our DBs are going to have to pay attention because it’s balls you don’t usually see thrown that far. They’re in the air 60 yards, sometimes 70 yards and you’re not used to playing a ball that far in the air. They do a really good job that way and he can run. He’s strong. Offensive line is very good in what they’re doing. They’re running the ball and got good bounce. The tight end’s a good player.
“Defensively, they got rush guys on the edge. 27 (James Pearce Jr.) and 30 (Roman Harrison) can bring it. Backer 6 (Aaron Beasley) is all over the place and can make plays. They rush, they’re physical up front. Inside guys, 21 (Omari Thomas), those guys are big. 5 (Kamal Hadden) and 1 (Gabe Jeudy-Lally) are good at corner. Their safeties tackle well. They do a good job— 12 (Tamarion McDonald) and those guys at nickel. They have a really good team. Their punter can kick it right footed or left footed. I think he’s only had two ball returned all year. It’s all rugby stuff and he can roll to the right and kick it or roll to the left and kick it. Which is a problem. Field goal kicker is seven out of eight. Our guys are awesome but they can’t kick it right and left. They kick it right and left and do a good job in their special teams and their returners are good. They’re a good football team.
“And then offensively, like I said, they can run and pass and their quarterback is hard to get on the ground. Joe is like (Arkansas’) KJ (Jefferson), he’s a big, physical guy.”
On if he can put his finger on Texas A&M’s road struggled the last few seasons
“Change how you approach, whether you go to the hotel this day at that time— what you approach is your maturity. How you play, how you practice. We’ll do things differently. We’ll crank up more crowd noise. We’ll crank up different situations. That constantly does change. Typically on the road what happens is mature teams play well on the road. Mature teams are confident and trust in things, believe in themselves and it’s hard. You just saw Alabama, what they’ve had, eight false starts? They had 10 or 11 penalties. They had eight false starts and a group of guys. You’re on the road in this league and it’s hard. Tennessee is one of those hard places, but hopefully your maturity and leadership— we’re a little bit older this year. Hopefully those things will help. And again, staying focused. Unfortunately that’s what happened in this game in the first part of that second half. We had a critical mistake when we got a turnover that could have had a big play coming back, and we have to sustain and we have to do a better job in short yardage, picking those things up. Hopefully that’s what it gets down to. We’re always changing reps. What we do in practice. We change constantly and try to look for things. Take different ideas from different coaches who have success.”
On if it’s more challenging to pass block in a challenging environment like Neyland Stadium
“No. Not necessarily. The good thing is, it’s noise. The good thing on the field is they have 11 dudes. You got 11 dudes. It’s still 100 yards long. As far as what you’re reading and doing those things— communication can get tougher and can be a problem. That’s the thing you have to make sure (of). If communication is good then you just have to trust your eyes. Your eyes, they can’t do anything about that, but we have to make sure we’re communicating well and everybody is on the same page, gets the right call or check or whatever you have to do to make sure we’re doing that. That’s the biggest concern when you’re on the road. It’s the communication part. Hearing the snap count, hearing those things like Alabama had an issue with. Or making sure you’re hand signals, everyone gets on the same page. Once that’s done it goes back to your eyes which you should be able to go play football.”
