The Tennessee Vols held their first fall scrimmage on Thursday at Neyland Stadium and the defense was the unit that left the field as the "winner".

"Defensively, I think we played with great effort, energy and strain," said Vols head coach Josh Heupel after the scrimmage. "We competed extremely hard, tackled well in space. A lot of really positive things from them."

"I thought the defensive side of the football was extremely physical and changed and disrupted the offensive front, played on the other side of the line of scrimmage," added Heupel.

The offense, however, was unable to find the consistency that Heupel wants to see.

"Offensively, we showed glimpses of those things, but didn't really string it together the way that we want to or need to," explained Heupel.

"At times, we didn't play as efficiently in the mechanics of playing with tempo, but some of that is getting the first, first down, too. Early in the scrimmage, there were a couple of three-and-outs."

Despite the offense's rough day, Heupel isn't panicking. In fact, he sounds optimistic about where his team is currently.

"At the end of the day with offensive football—I don't care what tempo you're playing at—you've got to be efficient," explained Heupel. "That means 11 guys have to do their job. If you don't, you're going to be on the wrong side of it, whether it's a dropped ball, busted protection or creating negative plays."

"You've got to be able to string things together and we've seen that throughout training camp," noted Heupel. "Today, you didn't see it consistently at the level that we certainly want it to be, but we absolutely feel like our guys are continuing to progress as we've gone through camp. There's some really good things out there from today, too."

"Collectively as a whole, the way that we operate on the offensive side of the ball, I'm overall pleased with what we're doing," said Heupel.

I think this is a great tone from Heupel. It's clear the offense still has some work to do — which isn't unexpected when installing a new offensive scheme. But instead of freaking out or proclaiming "we're nowhere close to where we need to be" (as Jeremy Pruitt often proclaimed), Heupel is taking a calm approach. He's been through this before. He's installed new offenses multiple times in his career. Heupel understands it's a marathon, not a sprint.

Heupel has proved throughout his career as a head coach/offensive coordinator that he can put an impressive offensive product on the field.

There's no reason to think that won't also be the case at Tennessee.

Featured image via Calvin Mattheis/News Sentinel via Imagn Content Services