For an offense and a quarterback that carried Tennessee all season long, what went wrong Saturday against the Sooners?

A VFL quarterback is going to give his take.

You are Locked on Balls, your daily podcast on the Tennessee Volunteers.

Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Good Wednesday morning, everybody. Welcome in to it. I am your host, Eric Kane, a member of the vaulquest.com team here in town, covering your Tennessee Athletics, Tennessee Volunteers. And, of course, this is Lockdown Falls every single weekday when you wake up, free and available wherever you get your podcast, post games as well.

I can't thank you enough for being here and can't thank Fanduil Sportsbook for being a part of the show today. Right now, new customers, get at just $5. And if your bet wins, you're going to get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. You can download the Fandul's Sportsbook app today. We've got a busy show coming up. Josh Ward going to stop in for his weekly

segments in segment number three, giving his thoughts on Tennessee's lost to Oklahoma, and Tennessee

basketball's win over Mercer in the season opener. But before we get to Josh, going to welcome

on VFL quarterback Jared Garantano to the show. If you guys follow the GameQuest podcast over Vaulkquest.com, Jared's been a regular contributor for me, for us, this football season, done a fantastic job. Wanted to bring him on this locked-on ball space so you guys can get his thoughts and I kind of get to know Jared. If you haven't heard much of him since his playing days, he's kind of like if you follow Tennessee football, it's kind of hard to miss him right now. He's been everywhere. But wanted to bring Jared Garantano on this platform so he can dive into what we're wrong with the offense to some of the turnovers in the first half and kind of what's to come for Tennessee football here in the 2025 season. So that's coming up right now, my conversation with Tennessee, former Tennessee quarterback, Jared Garantano. Jared, obviously the outcome was not what anybody wanted. It's disappointing for sure. But we'll start with this, man. You had a chance to come back to Neeland and take in the environment and watch the game and see a lot of people you haven't seen in quite some time. How is your weekend, what you finally got here, how is your weekend in Knoxville? I'd say the welcoming was a dream come true, right? All this time away, I didn't know what type of reception I was going to get. Of course, I came back last year, but it was a little bit undercover. I didn't really tell many people. But kind of looking forward to this, I was putting out some tweets. Everybody kind of knew that I was back in town. It was amazing, right? I mean, just the fans were absolutely awesome towards me. The tailgates were so cool. We went down to Volnavue. I've never been down there for the first time. And just the reception,

and just whether it was people at the gas station or whether we were out to eat, just everybody was absolutely awesome. And I couldn't have asked for honestly a better trip back home. Of course, we wish we would have won that football game. But outside of that, it was, it was tremendous. this that's that's really good to hear man i obviously you and i talk every week but you know over the

weekend i i watch your Twitter. I see you throwing out all those tweets. Of course, you saw Peyton, which I know you've met and talked to him several times before. I don't know if you were on the Mike Keith show, but I saw you take a picture with Mike Keith in his studio. You know, countless other pictures.

How great was it to catch up with a lot of people you haven't seen? Or maybe people like Mike

Keith that you might not have ever met before. There were so many. There was absolute legends

just everywhere. We had Mike Keith. We had Pay Manning. I got the chance to talk with Al Wilson. He's always one of the best people to talk to. Just being able to all the VFLs, right? Swain was there. I saw Khalil McKenzie, Cortezab, DK. Just being able to see all the guys that I haven't seen it forever. Just like some of the leaders of the football teams throughout all the course of the years. I saw that Iceman was also there. I didn't get the chance to meet him, but that looked super cool. I was happy that he was happy with running around. And I was able to do some media things that I didn't expect personally, but the opportunity was able to come up. So, of course, I was just ready to take it. And it was it was so cool just seeing all the faces, right?

I just haven't seen so many of them in the past five years being able to see them in person again, being able just get the hugs, kisses out the way, and just be able just to talk. It was like I said before, it was tremendous.

Yeah, I was going to say I forgot. I saw you on a TV set before. I saw you doing a bunch of different interviews. And of course, I was in the press box and I saw them show you on the Jumbo Trom, which was really, really cool. Last thing before we get into the game, how was, okay, two things, sorry. First, it's always a great atmosphere. you played in the stadium, you know, many, many times, but the night at Neeland experience, the light show, the, I mean, how was that for you watching from the outside?

Because, I mean, a lot of the stuff they didn't do when you played here.

Yeah, I honestly got caught with just some water in my eyes at one point.

It was just water.

It wasn't tears.

But it was, of course, I've never seen it. And it was almost breathtaking, right? Just being able just to see the stadium in that shade, just being able to see the dark mode and everybody wearing all black and the light show, the LEDs coming out, the videos on the video board, the band playing with the lit up with the lit up hats and everything.

It was just, I was sitting there just like a fan with my phone out the whole time.

I was trying to capture every moment I could.

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