With most eyes likely on Quinten Dormady and Jarrett Guarantano’s competition for the starting quarterback job, senior placekicker Aaron Medley is quietly facing a position battle of his own.
Head coach Butch Jones stated on Friday that Medley and freshman Brent Cimaglia are “in a battle” for the team’s starting kicking role.
“We’ve still go to figure out who our kicker is going to be,” Jones said. “They’re in a battle right now, and that’s just going to come down to overall consistency.”
Medley has served as the team’s starting placekicker since his freshman season, making 52 of his 73 career field goal attempts. The Lewisburg, Tennessee, native had a strong freshman season, but struggled during 2015 and did not make much improvement his junior year.
Cimaglia attended Fred J. Page High School in Franklin, Tennessee, and was ranked as the No. 3 kicker in the nation by 24/7 Sports. He made 6 of 11 field goal attempts during his senior year of high school.
“Everyday they’re kicking to see who’s going to be the guy,” senior punter Trevor Daniel said. “They’re neck and neck right now. They’ll answer each other. Somebody will hit one. The other one will hit it.
“It’s pretty close right now. I really don’t know who’s going to be the guy. I’m kind of excited to see.”
Closed scrimmage yields “valuable repetitions”: Tennessee held a closed scrimmage on Wednesday, and Jones expressed joy on Friday that his team was able to escape the live action without any injuries.
“That was one of the positives too is were were able to gain the valuable repetitions,” Jones said. “It was about 85 snaps, give or take a few. We were able to do some live special teams that aren’t included in those snaps as well.
“We had some individuals gain some quality reps and we came away where there are no injuries, so that’s always great as well.”
According to Jones, the levels of readiness between the two sides of the ball are “give and take.”
“That’s what we’re talking about consistency in performance,” Jones said. “I think our offense, the development overall has been set back a little bit which is lack of continuity and consistency. And we’re getting everyone back now and that’s why the next couple days are absolutely paramount in terms of getting the rhythm, the spacing, the timing down. Defensively, I like a lot of things that we’ve done.
“But again, it’s the small details. How do you leverage the football? How do you run to the football? Our block destruction at the second level. Those are all things that we have to take great strides in improving.”
Manning visits Vols: When Peyton Manning visited with Tennessee’s football team on Wednesday, he witnessed a similar offense to what he had seen before out of Jones’ squad.
“It’s really not a new offense,” Jones said. “It’s the Tennessee offense. Not much has changed there. Maybe just some run schemes, some more gap schemes and things like that. Obviously a different passing game with some nuances.
“But it’s Tennessee’s offense and Peyton has seen it before.”
Manning watched Tennessee’s closed scrimmage and spoke to the team before they took the field.
“Anytime you can have Peyton Manning back, it’s great,” Jones said. “He spent a lot of time with our team.”
