With two weeks to go in the semester, the focus remains on finishing in the classroom and the weight room before the players get a couple weeks off before starting summer school and what Josh Heupel refers to as the third quarter of the offseason program. That means it’s all about strength coach Derek Owings for the next three months. There will be football work with the coaches on the field, but the focus at this point is on the plan Owings has for this team.
The summer is big for plenty of players at plenty of positions. It’s certainly important for the defensive line, a line that has a lot of first- and second-year players in it.
For guys like Ethan Utley and Isaiah Campbell it’s important as it is for JJ Finch. Finch impressed in the spring and could be a factor this fall. In that interior, newcomer Xavier Gilliam has been challenged to be a leader along with Nathan Robinson, even though Gilliam has only been here since January. Gilliam’s play got everyone’s attention in the spring as well as their respect. By the way, Robinson had his best spring thanks to his health and is posed to have his best offseason of his career.
At defensive end, Mariyon Dye’s challenge is to work on speed at quickness to develop a better speed rush and outside rush. At the LEO spot, this is an important summer Christian Gass. Gass is coming off the hip injury last fall and wasn’t as effective this spring as everyone had hoped. His continued recovery this summer could be big for that position.
Everyone is still asking about transfer Chaz Coleman. Coleman has been on campus and in the building all spring. He was in the building this week. He did community service work with FCA and teammates this week as they provided food for the homeless in Knoxville. So he continues to be around. It’s an important summer for him as well if he’s going to be a big factor this fall.
The bottom line with the LEO position is there might be some creativity involved schematically and with personnel as well. One can make the case that Tennessee’s two best pass rushers this spring were Gilliam and Jordan Norman. Both repeatedly made plays in scrimmage settings.
Position coaches have had post spring exit meetings laying out goals for guys over the next couple of months.
For the receivers, it’s catching a lot of balls off the jugs machine particularly for the young receivers.
Tennessee is a couple of months away from becoming an adidas school. As we noted on the General’s Quarters earlier this week after several of you asked in the Monday chat, the plan is for Tennessee to use adidas footballs. The footballs are made by the same company as Nike footballs — just with a different logo on the side — so there shouldn’t be any change there. As for uniform reveals and all of that stuff, don’t look for any kind of major fashion show. Nothing will happen before July 1. But sports are starting to get in adidas gear in anticipation for July.
One thing that has been nice for the coaching staff is that there has been no dealing with the transfer portal and trying to retain a roster. The one portal window has been welcomed by everyone in college football. They may not all like the timing of it, but they certainly like having one window instead of two.
We mentioned it last week, Tennessee has sodded the new area on the practice field and will re-sod part of the existing practice field which basically completes what has been a long, long project on the expansion of the Anderson Training Center. They have also put the base for the General Neyland statue outside of Gate 9 in preparation for moving it there this summer.
There’s still nothing definitive at this point regarding the plan for the G-10 parking garage once the semester and graduations are over. In her appearance on The Mike Keith Show on Thursday, deputy athletics director Alicia Longworth was asked about opening the G-10 garage exit up to Phillip Fulmer way this fall, which she said would happen once pedestrian traffic was clear. But she also didn’t rule out G-10 looking different this fall.
“G-10 for football season may look very different. As we all know, we are still working towards the entertainment district. One of the challenges for football is the amount of pedestrian traffic we have exiting the stadium at one time. It’s a great challenge. You have 1o0,000 people in there, but when the game is over all those people are rushing into roadways.
“Once the pedestrian traffic clears then absolutely that will open back up.”