Tennessee Football is just over a week away from the 2026 Orange & White Game, which is set to take place on April 11 in Neyland Stadium. The Vols are hard at work during practice getting all the reps in that they can during the limited spring schedule.
Scattered throughout Tennessee’s practices have been a pair of spring scrimmages. The first took place on March 26, while the second took place on Thursday morning. Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel had optimistic comments after both scrimmages, particularly in praising the defense’s production. He also mentioned the offense putting some nice plays together after the second scrimmage on Thursday morning.
Aside from the Xs and Os, though, Heupel did mention some key external differences between the first scrimmage and the second on Thursday. He said that Tennessee “introduced crowd noise this week” and “simulated playing on the road.”
“I thought the quarterbacks, operationally, did a lot better job from day one to today,” Heupel said. “Same thing, offensive line, the communication, silent count. I think defensively, some of the things that we’ve added, I thought they grasped it really quickly and handled it well. They’ve continued to grow just fundamentally and within the scope of technique, that’s inside the scheme, but also just block destruction, tackling, we took a step. Offensively, I think up front we’re continually growing our ability to create movement, being better in our double teams versus coming off, those types of things.”
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Tennessee is hitting the ground running on one of the most important aspects of the season, especially in the new nine-game conference schedule – playing on the road. The Vols went 4-2 in road/neutral site games last season, with wins over Syracuse (Aflac Kickoff), Mississippi State, Kentucky, and Florida, and losses against Alabama and Illinois (Music City Bowl).
The Vols’ 2026 road schedule includes games at Georgia Tech, Arkansas, South Carolina, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt to close out the regular season.
Regardless of the things that stay constant or change throughout the scrimmages, Heupel believes in the importance of the practice schedule during spring camp. He enjoyed getting to watch his team get out on the grass in Neyland Stadium during both scrimmages.
“Practice is really important,” Heupel said on Thursday. “This is as close as you get to true game day. All the coaches on the sideline. You got to operate. So you want to see how they function and operate. You want to see how they handle apositive play, how they handle one that doesn’t go their way too. The only play that matters is the next play. Creating that mindset, that maturity to go play the next play as the first play and play it independently is really important in learning how to play smart football. So a lot of positives from today. There’s some things that certainly in all three phases we got to get better at too.”
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