The Tennessee Vols suffered the first loss of the Josh Heupel era this past weekend against the Pittsburgh Panthers.

While no loss is a good loss, the loss to Pittsburgh provided a glimpse into what Tennessee's offense can be under Heupel.

The Vols scored 34 points against Pitt — and it could've easily been 41 or 48 points. Tennessee often had wide receivers streaking down the field open only to have the ball overthrown.

UT will need improved quarterback play moving forward to unlock the full potential of Heupel's offense. But that's obvious. Nearly every program in the nation is hoping for improved quarterback play on a week-to-week basis.

There are a couple of other areas where Heupel is also hoping to see improvement as the Vols get set to take on Tennessee Tech in Neyland Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Two specific areas where Heupel wants to see improvement this week are penalties and turnovers.

"The obvious thing is penalties, the next thing is turnovers," said Heupel on Thursday. "Those are both areas that we need to be better at as we get into conference play. You can't lose the turnover battle every week. You're not going to be successful. You can't lose the field position (battle). You can't change the way the game's played, in particular on third down, with penalties. We've got to get better in those two areas."

Tennessee committed 13 penalties for 134 yards in the loss to Pitt. Penalties are going to happen in football, but that's an inordinate amount for any program. It's definitely something the Vols have to get under control moving forward.

As for the lack of turnovers, Heupel is confident that Tennessee will have a breakthrough soon.

"We've gotten our hands on a couple, but haven't come down with them," said Heupel earlier this week. "You've just got to compete and play hard. Eventually, those things start coming your way."

"We're doing the right things to try and put them in a position to make that play when it comes, just got to continue to strain and play hard," added Heupel.

Vols defensive back Trevon Flowers echoed those sentiments this week.

"It is something we work on every day," said Flowers. "We haven't had any breaks yet but one of these days we will, it will be a cycle after that. We work on it every day on the jugs and punch the ball out, sooner or later it will come."

The Vols are playing with great effort. They just have some things they need to tighten up.

Saturday's matchup against Tennessee Tech will be a great opportunity for Tennessee to fix some issues before a big showdown in the Swamp with Florida on September 25.

Featured image via UTAD/Randy Sartin/USA Today