TE JONNU SMITH
So, coming back to Tennessee for you, just kind of walk me through some of the emotions maybe in the beginning of this game.
To me it was just another game. We got to be professional at the end of the day. We came in here ultimately, trying to win a football game. That's the approach I had. Definitely great seeing some of the guys that I played with, some of my former teammates. But at the end of the day, it's a business trip.
I think you and Arthur (Smith) were the ones that were smiling the most pre-game, kind of like seeing all these people that you used to work with so closely. Did you ever talk to him, I guess throughout this game, like, 'Hey we got to have something for this game here.'
Like I said, me and Arthur (Smith) understand this is a business at the end of the day. We can't let the main thing go unhandled. We've got to keep the main thing the main thing. It was definitely—we're human, we all got those emotions, and we built relationships with a lot of these guys. So of course, it was great coming back. But at the end of the day, we ultimately came here to get a win. And we didn't do that today. So got a lot of evaluating to do and get better and we'll keep moving forward.
A lot of guys have pointed to the surge kind of late for you guys as an offense, as something that's positive to take away. With Taylor (Heinicke) coming in, what were some of the differences that you guys' kind of felt on offense?
I think just as a unit we understood whoever is in there, we just got to play better. It wasn't necessarily one person coming in and changing the dynamic of it. Guys went down and guys stepped up and made plays and we needed to make those plays no matter who was in there. So, it got kind of, like you said, we got a late surge, but it was kind of too late. You can't play from behind. It's the NFL. Every team has the ability to win games so, you can't pick them all.
Calais (Campbell) was saying 'we've got to stop beating ourselves on all phases of the game.' How confident are you guys moving forward on offense that you can do that?
Oh, extremely confident. We've seen us–and I won't even say we've seen us at our best–but we played at a high level and still got a lot of things to improve on. So that's encouraging. So, I think that when we continue to play our brand of football, like I always say, I say it week in and week out, when we play our brand of football, we find a way to win games and we don't lose games.
