Tennessee football head coach Josh Heupel’s Monday press conference was spent updating several injuries while recapping the loss to No. 1 Georgia.

Tennessee welcomes Vanderbilt to Neyland Stadium on Saturday for senior day. It is also a shortened week with Thanksgiving, so Monday will be the only day Heupel meets with the media.

Here are three takeaways from his Monday press conference.

Javontez Spraggins out, several “questionable”

John Campbell Jr. did not play on Saturday, and Gerald Mincey played very limited snaps near the end of the game. Both remain questionable for Saturday’s game against Vanderbilt.

“Hope to have both of those guys available in this,” Heupel said. “We’ll kind of see how they go through the week and where they’re at before we get to kickoff. But certainly hope to have those guys better.”

As for Spraggins, who went down with a leg injury in the Georgia contest, he will miss the “remainder of the season.” He was helped off the field following his injury. He was on crutches on the sideline as the game ended.

“Unfortunate injury to a guy that pours into his teammates,” Heupel said. “Has great energy, competes extremely hard, plays really hard, continues to get better as a player. And disappointed for him, certainly.”

As for the secondary that is thinning by the day, Heupel didn’t offer many concrete updates. By the end of the Georgia contest, walk-on defensive back Will Brooks was on the field.

Heupel did say that Wesley Walker is “more questionable” than his fellow defensive backs Tamarion McDonald and Jourdan Thomas. Walker and McDonald did not play against Georgia, and Thomas suffered an injury early in the game.

“We were hoping that T-Mac would be ready to go (against Georgia),” Heupel said. “As we went through warmups, he just wasn’t in a position to play. Hope to have those guys ready to go on this one.”

The injury bug has not been friendly to Tennessee this year.

The Vols have already lost Bru McCoy, Kamal Hadden and Arion Carter to season-ending injuries. They will also be without Dont’e Thornton Jr., who may return for a bowl game.

Keenan Pili and Christian Charles have also been sidelined for most of the year with undisclosed injuries.

Offensive inconsistencies

Tennessee struggled to get the offense firing against Georgia following Jaylen Wright’s 75-yard touchdown run that opened the game.

Tennessee finished with just 277 yards of offense. The Vols have only scored 16 touchdowns through their SEC slate — the lowest total a Heupel-coached team has finished with was 36 in 2021.

Execution was the word Heupel used to describe the offensive inefficiencies.

“We’re not accurate with the football or don’t come down with the catch and in one of the man-to-man situations,” Heupel said. “All of those things parlay itself into not being as efficient and effective as you need to be during the course of that game.”

Tennessee was 2-of-11 on third down, another stat that signifies the issues the Vols had on offense against Georgia.

“Getting you to the next set of downs so mainly able to convert,” Heupel said. “A lot of that was in man-to-man situations and make plays. Offensively, we were not able to do that, not able to sustain anything.”

Bouncing back from back-to-back losses

Heupel called this team a “prideful” group on Monday. He could sense the disappointment in the building, but he expected that following Saturday’s loss to Georgia.

“Disappointed with last week’s result certainly, but at the end of the day, there’s a lot of work that goes into it from the time they stepped foot back on campus in January,” Heupel said. “This is our next opportunity. We need to go take full advantage of it. Once we got out on the grass today, I liked the energy from them.”

Vanderbilt comes into Knoxville winless in the SEC and with very little momentum. Tennessee, on the other hand, will look to avoid three straight losses. Also, because Vanderbilt played during “Week 0,” it will have a bye this week.

It is the Commodores’ second bye of the season and lets them heal up ahead of the in-state contest with Tennessee.

“They’ve had two weeks of preparation,” Heupel said. “Opportunity to get healthy. This is an in-state game. This is a big game for them. It’s a big game for us too, and we need to go finish it. Got to play physically. You got to win at the line of scrimmage.”