The Tennessee Volunteer’s are up for a fresh start and a new season as spring football practice begins and off-season strength and condition programs come to a close.
One might say, the team is putting on an entirely new image. First-year head coach Butch Jones is now the face of the football program, but he isn’t stopping with coaching changes.
While he saw significant improvement over the winter off-season training, Jones is looking for more, and better.
“I thought we took great strides, but we still have a long way to go in terms of getting our strength levels to where they need to be and our endurance to where we can play to the tempo for the style of football that we want to play,” he said. “Our kids have done a great job.”
That said, Jones is raising the bar. He wants his team to strive for greatness and nothing less.
“There’s a number of areas that we want to accomplish and I think the big thing is developing our overall standard of play,” Jones said. “You can’t take anything for granted.
“Like today, we just walked around the practice field and so when our players hit the ground running tomorrow, they know where we’re at for the individual periods, transitions, the standards and expectations in which we’re going to develop this football team.”
But that standard isn’t set during the regular season. For the Vols, it all starts tomorrow.
“That all begins on the practice field,” Jones said. “I think the mental and physical preparation that it takes to prepare yourself for 15 practices is going to be critical.”
While that mental preparation is primarily an individual process, Jones is concerned that each player channels that mental strength towards one shared goal.
“Pride in our performance, standard in our performance — we’re looking for individuals who consistently perform at a championship level and I think that’s a big word: ‘consistency,’ in everything we do,” he said. “From the way we meet, to the way we lift, the way we practice, in the way we play the game.
“I think a team-togetherness, team-building, team chemistry is all relative to winning. It’s the coach that uses this that makes it. It’s going to be the team that buys into this, the team that believes in themselves.”
For this Vols’ team, much of that “team-togetherness” will start at the top, as younger players will learn from example for the seniors, like offensive lineman Ja’Wuan James, who said that Jones brought the senior class together yesterday to talk about leadership.
“He encourages us to lead,” James said. “The seniors are important for getting Tennessee back to the standard it’s supposed to be. We just need to grab the young guys, pull them along and if we see something not right, we got to fix it.”
Spring practice will not only allow Jones to see how each player works together to make a team, but also how each player performs individually.
“It will be a grade every day — a plus or minus,” he said. “Everyone will be charted and everything will be detail-oriented. I know I talked about it before, but it’s all about consistency. Your performance every day, especially in the quarterback position. The individual who manages the football the best and makes the least amount of mistakes, but really, it’s the individual that gives us the best opportunity to win come Saturdays will be our starting quarterback.”
The first-year head coach said he is focused on evaluating players’ potential as team contributors and leaders.
“There’s only so much you can do in helmets,” Jones said. “The big thing I want to see is the attention to detail. The fundamentals. I want to see how much they can retain from the meetings. I want to see how much our players can take from the meeting room and the classroom to the field and apply it; we call that functional intelligence.”
While the Vols’ last few seasons have left fans less than pleased, Jones said it makes the team that much more passionate to win, giving him hope for the upcoming season.
“I think that we’re a hungry football team,” he said. “At the end of the day, it comes down to leadership and your senior class. I’ve never been a part of a successful football team that didn’t have a strong senior class. The hourglass is turned over for them. They have 12 opportunities left and we’re working for 13 and then 14. So every opportunity is critical. I think it’s a byproduct of leadership and expectations.
“What I’ve seen from this football team is that we want to win, but we have to learn how to win. We talk about being a champion every day, it’s how you represent yourself, how you think, your thought process. I told our players that if every individual takes accountability for themselves, we collectively can improve as a football team.”
