The day after Tennessee’s stunning, season-opening loss to Georgia State, the Vols took it upon themselves to try to make sure they don’t suffer a repeat performance this week.

Tennessee junior safety Theo Jackson said Tuesday that the Vols held a players-only meeting Sunday coming off their 38-30 loss to Georgia State on Saturday at Neyland Stadium in an attempt to move past their “very disappointing loss” going into Saturday’s home game against BYU.

“We all came together that Sunday,” Jackson said before Tennessee’s practice Tuesday afternoon.

“We all just met without the coaches to go over, like, what do we need to do to get better in the future and don’t let this happen again?”

Jackson, one of four Tennessee players who met with reporters on Tuesday, said the mood and environment around the Vols’ facility the past couple of days has “definitely been down because of how we played” in their loss to the Panthers, who were nearly four-touchdown underdogs going into Saturday’s game.

“But we can’t let that get in the way of our next opponent, BYU,” he added.

Tennessee is scheduled to play host to the Cougars at 7 p.m. Eastern time Saturday at Neyland Stadium. The game will be televised nationally on ESPN.

The Vols know it might not be easy to move past a disheartening loss like the one they suffered in Saturday’s opener. But they’re doing their best this week to forget about it and turn their attention to BYU.

“We’ve just got to use the snap-and-clear method,” Jackson said. “It happened. We can’t control the outcome now, so we’ve just got to look forward.”

Jackson, a former standout at Overton High School in Nashville, Tenn., said he and his teammates know they’re capable of bouncing back from their season-opening defeat, a game they led early in the fourth quarter before Georgia State took control by scoring 17 consecutive points.

“I would say we all know that we have the players and coaches to succeed,” Jackson said, “so we’ve just got to rely on our coaching and then our assignments to push us through.”

Sunday’s film review showed Tennessee’s players that they had plenty of room for improvement across the board.

“After we saw the film, we had seen how we didn’t play up to the way that we’re supposed to play, so we just used that as motivation for the next games,” Jackson said.

Since then, he said, it has been “our seniors mostly” who have been most vocal about what the Vols need to do moving forward. Jackson pointed to senior wide receiver Jauan Jennings, senior safety Nigel Warrior and senior outside linebacker Darrell Taylor as some of the players who have tried to take charge in the aftermath of Saturday’s loss.

“Those are the most vocal leaders that we have,” Jackson said.