Josh Heupel met with media Monday afternoon for his weekly press conference. And the Vols’ head coach wasn’t as upbeat as he has been through the first 2 weeks of the year.

Obviously, it isn’t hard to see why.

Things have gotten progressively worse for Tennessee since beating Clemson in the Orange Bowl last season. The Vols opened the season with a good win over Virginia and followed it up with a less-than-ideal win over Austin Peay in Week 2. Fans could only watch as the wheels very nearly fell off in a loss to Florida in Week 3.

Nearly. Tennessee’s season is far from over, but as Heupel told reporters Saturday, things have to start changing quickly.

Heupel discussed a myriad of things that have to get better Monday afternoon, and while he didn’t call starting QB Joe Milton’s outing against Florida perfect by any means, he implied that the 6th year-senior was far from the main problem Saturday against the Gators.

In fact, Heupel insisted Milton was in the right spots and that his decision-making was where it needs to be, though admitting he needs to clean up some accuracy issues. Here’s his full quote on Milton and the offensive woes:

“He did some really good things the other night,” Heupel said. “The pick, we can’t just throw it up. We’d like to have that one back. Gotta be better in protection, too in that situation. The decision-making, where he’s going with the football, I said it before the game I’ll say it after the game, he was in the right spots. Accuracy, wide receivers being exact in their routes, all of those things gotta to improve for us to be as efficient as we need to be.”

Heupel starts speaking on Milton around the 8-minute mark of the video below:

Tennessee returns home for a bit of a breather this coming Saturday against UTSA, which has struggled more than anticipated to start the season. The Vols’ response will say a lot about the current state of the program after an ugly loss to an SEC East rival.

The game is set to kick at 4 p.m.  in Knoxville on SEC Network.