Tennessee enters the final game of the regular season with little doubt about who\u2019s available from an injury standpoint.\u00a0 The Vols released their first SEC availability report ahead of Saturday home finale \u2014 a match up Vanderbilt. \u00a0The Vols (8-3, 4-3 SEC) and the Commodores\u00a0 (9-2, 5-2) Saturday afternoon are scheduled for a 3:30 start on ESPN\u00a0at Neyland Stadium.<\/p>\n
Offensive guard\u00a0Wendell Moe<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0was dressed Saturday night at Florida and was available in an emergency role. Moe was not called upon to play. Moe\u2019s knee is a week better and he is available if needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Running back Peyton Lewis missed last week\u2019s game with an ankle injury. Tennessee\u2019s DeSean Bishop got the line share of the work with a career high 24 carries. Lewis remains questionable for Saturday\u2019s match up with Vanderbilt.<\/p>\n Senior tight end\u00a0Miles Kitselman<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0remains out. Kitselman injured his knee in the third quarter of a 42-9 win over New Mexico State and missed last week\u2019s game against Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n The injury report will be updated again Thursday night, Friday night, then one final time 90 minutes before Saturday night\u2019s kickoff.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the tight end position, the Vols turned to Ethan Davis<\/a><\/strong> a week ago and the Georgia native responded with his best night as a Vol. Davis had 5 catches for 72 yards and a touchdown.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, he\u2019s ready to play \u2013 kind of goes back to being functional versus being dominant,\u201d tight ends coach Alec Abeln said<\/a><\/strong>. \u201cObviously, had a pass protection sack on Saturday and that really just comes down to a day one fundamental that I trust him in all those situations. He\u2019s got to go continue to execute it. But I think the challenge is, man, you can play with him and ask him to do anything we\u2019re going to ask him to do. It\u2019s just about not just being able to do it but being able to be dominant while we\u2019re doing it \u2013 I think is the next step.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, Tennessee will be without Jermod McCoy<\/a><\/strong> and Rickey Gibson<\/a><\/strong> who have missed the entire season due to injury.\u00a0<\/p>\n Will Tennessee continue to play some three linebacker sets? <\/p>\n With he dismissal of Boo Carter<\/a><\/strong>, Tennessee is thin at the nickel position. Jalen McMurray<\/a><\/strong> has been the starter there all season. Last week at Florida, to help manage the lack of depth as well as matching up against Florida\u2019s offense, Tennessee played a traditional 4-3 defense with Arion Carter<\/a><\/strong>, Edwin Spillman<\/a><\/strong> and Jeremiah Telander<\/a><\/strong> on the field at the same time. The trio combined for 23 tackles including 2.5 for loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been working on that,\u201d Heupel said. \u201cThat\u2019s a part of our package. Obviously, we are thinner at a certain spot right now than we were (Boo Carter dismissal). Ultimately we felt like in certain personnel groupings, certain situations we had the opportunity to be bigger and not let it hinder us in what we wanted to do against defending the pass.\u201d<\/p>\n The question is can Tennessee deploy that same look Saturday afternoon against a much more explosive Vanderbilt attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennessee enters the final game of the regular season with little doubt about who\u2019s available from an injury…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":407666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1718,62,43860,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-407665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-regwall","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tennessee-football","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115620092683192051","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}