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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Vols concluded Week 2 with their first scrimmage Saturday. It was a crucial scrimmage as the season nears and the depth chart is coming into fruition on the forefront of the final week of fall camp.
Here are five takeaways from the second week.
1) Offensive line depth chart
Offensive line coach Don Mahoney told Saturday Down South that he would like to settle on a group of five starters at some point during the third week of fall camp.
Players discussed making it through the halfway point of camp, and offered their thoughts on the season and reaching their potential.
2) Team continuity
There’s zero doubt that there is a loose thread within Team 120. It’s a credit to Butch Jones and his staff. Everyone believes in their self, and there is zero selfishness.
“It’s a group of guys with a lot of chemistry,” offensive lineman Jashon Robertson told Saturday Down South. “We’re tight-knit, family atmosphere and we’re just excited to get going with the season.”
Covering Jones during his entire time at Tennessee, selfishness has never been an issue. Now there are more talented players to help getting back to an SEC-championship level, and Team 120 appears to remain unselfish and on the same page.
3) Bob Shoop
Players believe in new defensive coordinator Bob Shoop, and Shoop believes in what he sees in his players.
The first-year defensive coordinator for Tennessee just needs to get his pieces in the right place to coordinate his defense.
“I told the group that I don’t think we are ahead, but I don’t think we are behind,” Shoop said at the midway point of fall camp. “I think we are right on schedule.
“Our front four has played really well. We have depth at the end. Our defensive tackle position is playing really well. Darrin Kirkland Jr. has established himself as a top-flight linebacker. We have to keep him sharp for the next few weeks. We are still working to establish depth at the linebacker. We have some good pieces to our secondary. Positional flexibility is going to be our key there. We are just trying to get the best five players on the field in the secondary for us.”
4) Jalen Hurd not satisfied
Junior running back Jalen Hurd is deserving to be in the spotlight. But what makes him special is that his off-the-field persona does not place himself in the spotlight.
His on-the-field play does the talking, and nothing has altered his focus of winning with team football for the 2016 season.
Hurd, like his teammates, do not dive into the trash talk coming from the Florida Gators, most notably Jalen Tabor.
5) Injuries
Butch Jones addressed fall camp injuries Friday during team media day, and there are no apparent significant injuries.
“Knock on wood, it’s still a long camp,” Jones said as the second week of fall camp concluded. “There’s a fine line. We have to practice with a high level of physicality. That’s our style of play. We have to practice with great, great intensity, no matter if it’s mental effort and mental intensity in a walk-through, or whether it’s in a practice setting. That’s critical for our football team.
“But I think Jason McVeigh’s done a great job in terms of laying out the foundation for the training room, and it’s also preventing those injuries. It’s the recovery, it’s the sleep, it’s the hydration, it’s mental fatigue.
“We haven’t had many soft tissue injuries. I think that’s byproduct of this summer with all the explosive training and the different stretches we’ve done. But I think this football team will really, really define itself here in the next couple of days.
“When you start getting into practice 11, practice 12, 13, 14, 15, that’s kind of where you draw the line in the sand. That’s where your team is born, from your leadership to your toughness. Great players, you know, that’s where they pick it up and they assert themselves on this team when others kind of go into a shell and they drop off when it gets very, very demanding. And so the next few days I think will tell us a lot of direction of our football team, but I think it’s a byproduct of our players understanding recovery.”
Dan Harralson covers Tennessee football for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow Dan on Twitter @danharralson.
