There wasn’t a lot to nitpick from Tennessee’s 45-24 road win over Georgia Tech.

The Volunteers, however, weren’t perfect in Atlanta.

A big area of concern for Tennessee coming out of the win over Georgia Tech is penalties.

The Vols committed 14 penalties for 142 yards. The penalties didn’t cost them against Georgia Tech, but that amount of penalties could lose Tennessee a game in SEC play.

Tennessee had a couple of unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, some holding penalties, an offensive facemask, and three defensive pass interference calls (on the same drive and by the same player), among other infractions.

Vols head coach Josh Heupel was asked about the penalties on Monday during his weekly press conference, and he made it clear that players have to make the choice to “not hurt the football team.”

“I addressed it today,” said Heupel. “I went through all of them (penalties). Our football team has got the ability to grow into a good football team if we make the choices to do the right things. I presented the video of it today, and our players have gotta make a choice to not hurt the football team.”

Tennessee will definitely need to clean that stuff up before playing Texas in two weeks. Penalties are going to happen, but the post-snap unsportsmanlike conduct penalties are easy to avoid. I understand players are competing in the moment, but they have to know once the whistle is blown, it’s time to move on to the next play — channel the aggression into that next play.

We’ll see how clean the Vols play against Kennesaw State on Saturday night in Neyland Stadium and whether any progress has been made.