KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee held its 14th practice of the season and conducted its second scrimmage of the fall camp on Saturday afternoon at Neyland Stadium, getting in 131 total plays between regular scrimmage work as well as situational, red zone and goal line work.
“To start the scrimmage, I really felt like the offensive line kind of dominated the scrimmage with the ones and the twos, even the threes,” said head coach Jeremy Pruitt. “I thought they did a good job.
“We changed some situations up. We had some guys who were banged up. Some guys pushed through, but we held some others out just to be precautionary. Playing as many quarterbacks as we played today was probably not fair to the offense. It’s hard for a quarterback who goes out and plays eight snaps to get in a good rhythm.”
Freshmen Coming Along
The younger Vols got plenty of opportunities to display their talents on Saturday, and Pruitt feels like the freshman are developing pretty well.
“Most freshmen, no matter where they go to school, you can sit there and meet with them all summer, you can meet with them in fall camp, and when you start talking about pace of practice and the competition on the field, it gets overwhelming,” said Pruitt.
“That’s why you see very few freshmen that come out and start the first game. Our guys are developing, all of them — on offense, defense, Paxton Brooks at punter, they’re all developing and improving every day. So I think that the more knowledge they get about what they’re supposed to do and watch guys do it the right way, it gives them an idea. So we’re happy with the direction that all of the guys are headed.”
Pruitt Sees Competitive Nature in Jahmir Johnson
“Jahmir is a really good competitor. He has good balance, body control and plays for power. He’s not an overly big guy, but he has some power in his body. He can play probably all five spots on the offensive line. Again, this is new for him, he’s coming from junior college and only played one of two years in high school, so he’s learning the way we practice. He’s really improved in the last five or six days, so we think that he has a bright future.”
Pruitt Stresses Importance of Tackling
When asked about how happy he was with the overall tackling during this week’s scrimmage compared to last week’s, Coach Pruitt expressed his high standards for the Big Orange defense.
“Unless we make every tackle I’m never going to be happy with how we tackle,” said Pruitt. “And sometimes getting them on the ground might not be tackling the right way or playing with the right technique.”
“We have a long ways to go to be able to tackle the way that we want to be able to when it comes to fundamentals and technique our guys are working hard to improve on it, and I can see them getting better at it, and I see confidence in them, but we still have a long ways to go.”
Head Coach Jeremy Pruitt Post-Practice Quotes
Opening statement:
“We had 131 snaps today, which was good because we ran a few more than we did last week. We changed some situations up. We had some guys who were banged up. Some guys pushed through, but we held some others out just to be precautionary. Playing as many quarterbacks as we played today was probably not fair to the offense. It’s hard for a quarterback who goes out and plays eight snaps to get in a good rhythm. It’s not like changing up series in a game, when the other team has the ball and then you go back out. We gave all four quarterbacks an opportunity today because we felt like they deserved it. It probably hindered the offense’s timing. I had some guys that competed much better on both sides of the ball. The one thing that sticks out when you watch us to me is that we can get eight or nine guys to do it right on every single play. The problem is that we have one or two who don’t do it right. If you don’t have everybody doing it right, sometimes you won’t have success. It’s different guys every time. We have talked about being consistent and being a master at your position. We have guys that are close and are working hard to get there. We have come a long ways in a short period of time, but we still have two weeks left before the first game. We will continue to grind like fall camp for four or five more days before we begin working on West Virginia. The next week will be important for our guys. We will start to get an idea of who some of the guys will be. You start slotting guys on special teams. Moving forward, guys will get a lot more reps at certain positions, which will help us. We will improve drastically over the next couple of weeks just from taking more reps.”
On if the offensive line will be managed differently once Trey Smith returns:
“I don’t see it being managed any differently than it is now. Obviously, that would be another guy who hasn’t had any reps since we have been here. He’s only sophomore, so he’s not played a lot of ball. It’s not like we are talking about a three-year veteran. He will have a lot to learn, and I’m sure he will have to learn a lot on the go. We have moved guys around all camp because you never know. You could lose guys at any point in time, so we are just trying to create depth. Coach Friend and Coach Helton have done a good job with all the players on offense, trying to move guys around to create depth, which is important for us.”
On who was held out during the scrimmage:
“We did not scrimmage Darrin Kirkland, Jr. today. He wanted to and felt great, but going back to what we decided to do before camp started, we were going to work him a certain amount of days and give him a certain amount of days off just for recovery and building him back. It’s the same with Jauan Jennings. You have guys that haven’t performed at a high level in a very long time. If you just go out and throw them in the fire, their body can’t adapt and will just shut down. We are trying to build them up and build up their endurance with all of them. But yeah, Kirkland was one guy we held out.”
On separation in the quarterback competition:
“Everyday when you watch practice, all four guys do some really good things. Again, it’s about being consistent and it’s about the critical errors. If you look at a drive, you march down through there seven to 10 plays, but it only takes one play to mess up the drive. So we need to stay out of the negative plays, and our guys have been reducing those every day. JT being the youngest guy and being new to college, he probably hit a wall to start camp, but now things have kind of slowed down for him and he has some arm talent, so we wanted to give him some opportunities today.”
On freshmen competing for early playing time:
“Most freshmen, no matter where they go to school, you can sit there and meet with them all summer, you can meet with them in fall camp, and when you start talking about pace of practice and the competition on the field, it gets overwhelming. That’s why you see very few freshmen that come out and start the first game. Our guys are developing, all of them — on offense, defense, Paxton Brooks at punter, they’re all developing and improving every day. So I think that the more knowledge they get about what they’re supposed to do and watch guys do it the right way, it gives them an idea. So we’re happy with the direction that all of the guys are headed.”
On how long into fall camp the quarterback competition will last:
“There’s a fine line there. But I think that because of the reps that we take on two-spotting, the guys get a lot of opportunities and we’ve been doing this all camp. I think after the first guy, the second guy or the third guy shows himself, we’ll whittle it down, but until then we’ll stay status quo until we figure it out.”
On what he’s seen from Jahmir Johnson:
“Jahmir is a really good competitor. He has good balance, body control and plays for power. He’s not an overly big guy, but he has some power in his body. He can play probably all five spots on the offensive line. Again, this is new for him, he’s coming from junior college and only played one of two years in high school, so he’s learning the way we practice. He’s really improved in the last five or six days, so we think that he has a bright future.”
On the pressure on the quarterback from the defense:
“When you talk about protecting the quarterbacks, there’s a bunch of things and a bunch of variables that are involved, whether it’s the offensive line being on the same page, it may be the quarterback, he may be supposed to know that he’s supposed to get rid of the ball, or it may be a running back. When you have a bunch of guys that are new and playing together for the first time and everyday they’re kind of swapping groups — it’s not just quarterback, it’s offensive lineman, it’s tight ends, it’s running backs. As we move forward in the next three or four days, we’ll figure it out, and we have to have a starting point and then we’ll give guys opportunities as we get through the season, but at some point in time we have to get where we pick a lane at all positions.”
On Jauan Jennings and the tackling by the defense during the scrimmage:“Jauan did scrimmage. Unless we make every tackle I’m never going to be happy with how we tackle. And sometimes getting them on the ground might not be tackling the right way or playing with the right technique. We have a long ways to go to be able to tackle the way that we want to be able to when it comes to fundamentals and technique our guys are working hard to improve on it, and I can see them getting better at it, and I see confidence in them, but we still have a long ways to go.”
On what he liked about today’s scrimmage:
“To start the scrimmage I really felt like the offensive line kind of dominated the scrimmage with the ones and the twos, even the threes. I thought they did a good job. You could see the line of scrimmage changing, which that doesn’t say much about the defensive front, but as practice went I felt like that – whether it’s the plays, whether it’s how hot it was or how many snaps guys have taken – you saw guys that weren’t performing at the end of the practice just like they were at the beginning, so that’s not exactly what we’re looking for. We’d like to finish better than we start, so we’ve got to improve there. When we watch the tape we’ll have a lot better idea, but I just know standing out on the field you see the line of scrimmage move, so it’s good and bad.”
On how defensive play calling will be handled this season:
“With Kevin (Sherrer), Charles (Kelly), Tracy (Rocker), Chris (Rumph) – all of those guys I’ve worked with before – so really any of those guys could call our defense, all of them could. As we go through the season, we’ll put the game plan together as a group. I’m not leaving Terry (Fair) out, Terry just hasn’t been with us before, so he’s learning the stuff and he’s doing a really good job at it, but when we get to the season I’ll probably call the defense.”
On the balancing how hard to push players and how technology has changed things over the years:
“I don’t know much [about] what’s happened there so I’m probably not the right person to ask about that. I know from my standpoint, ‘is it different now than when I played? Absolutely.’ Maybe that’s because we’re smarter as coaches, and technology, you learn things. I had a guy call me the other day and said ‘I got to ask you a question. He said, you’re telling me that they can wear a vest and you can know how fast they’re running?’ I said, ‘yes sir, and how many yards they ran and how many 12 mile per hour burst or 15 mile per hour bursts’, so from a technology standpoint, obviously it helps you with soft tissue injuries. It gives you an idea. You look out here and you got one wide receiver that runs 9,000 yards in a practice and a guy that plays the same position only runs five [thousand], something’s not right there. For us, we use our GPS system to get an idea of that, to make sure everybody is taking the same amount of reps and nobody is kind of out of whack there.”
On what kind of camp the defensive line has had so far:
“I would say the defensive line is probably like every position on our team. Every position we’ve got has had some really good days. But we’ve not done it every single day. For us to be the kind of football team that we want to be, we’ve got to develop the right habits to play to a standard every single day, creating the right habits. Everybody on our football team has flashed at some point or another during this fall camp, but there are some guys that are probably doing it a little more consistently than others. There’s a lot of guys that I’ve seen lots of improvement [from] over the last two weeks. We’re headed in the right direction. We’ve got to bring some more guys with us. We’ve got some guys that have the ability but right now they don’t have the knowledge because they’re inexperienced, and they’ll improve over the next three to four weeks. Hey, there may be some guys that don’t play much early in the year but by the fifth or sixth game they might be guys that might be starting for us and playing meaningful time, so that’s why we practice the way we practice, so we can help develop all of our players in our program. I think it will pay off for us in the long run.”
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