Tennessee football has a problem to solve in the special teams department, and coordinator Mike Ekeler says it is a good issue to have.
Following the departure of kicker Charles Campbell, the Vols enter 2024 with another position battle aboard. Inside the room lies Josh Turbyville, alongside JT Carver and Max Gilbert.
“It’s been awesome,” Ekeler said about the kicking competition. “We got three guys that could pretty much start anywhere in the country.
“Max (Gilbert) has done an awesome job. Turbs (Josh Turbyville) just keeps getting better. And JT (Carver), man, since the day we walked in here, he just grinds and he works his tail off. And he can go out there and, like I said, those three guys can play anywhere in the country. So we like the competition we’ve got.”
Turbyville and Carver have been part of the program for multiple years now, while Gilbert enters his second season in the orange and white. Turbyville has seen the most field time of the three as he handled kickoff duties. As the primary kickoff specialist, Turbyville accounted for 5,029 yards on 81 kickoffs, ranking eighth in the country. Additionally, he recorded his field goal and PAT attempt during Tennessee’s homecoming victory over UConn. Nailing a 33-yard field goal, Turbyville sits 1-for-1 on career attempts to this point.
The latter half of the battle consists of two West Tennessee legs that have seen very minimal action. JT Carver is the veteran of the group, as he enters his fourth season as a member of the Vol football team. Attempting just one kick — that came in his true freshman year — in his three years on campus, Carver has waited in line behind the likes of transfers Campbell and Chase McGrath. Year four puts him right in line with the rest of the competition, as Tennessee elected not to go to the transfer portal this offseason.
Beside Carver stands former Lausanne Collegiate School standout Max Gilbert. The placekicker enters his second year on campus after taking a redshirt during his first year. Gilbert did not see any game action as a true freshman, which means he could be making his collegiate debut in 2024.
“What’s really cool about it though, I’ve been with a lot of teams’ rooms over the years and our guys are so tight-knit,” Ekeler said. “Obviously it’s like a quarterback. There’s one ball, only one guy can go out there and those guys all want that job. But they truly have a great camaraderie. They truly help each other and they pull for each other in the right way. So the chemistry in that room is as good as I’ve ever seen.”
Regardless of the decision, Ekeler is confident in his group — and confident is a word that may be selling him short. The fourth-year coordinator expects his team to be amongst the best units in the country, and his most premier since he’s been at Tennessee.
“This is year four,” Ekeler said. “Year four. Our guys understand what we’re asking from them. Each year we push the envelope to get better. And we got a saying, it’s ABT, all about technique, for ABM, all about money. These guys buy in, they get it, they see it every single day.”
With expectations comes delivery. It is easy to expect results, but it is widely hard to simulate the pressure of gameday when real situations arrive. Ekeler, however, credits head coach Josh Heupel with how he creates game-like simulations during practice and scrimmages.
“Heup does that all the time,” Ekeler said. “He’ll get those guys up, he’ll get the whole team up and he’ll literally form a tunnel around them and pressure kicks at the end of the day. And so he puts those guys in the situations really, truly a handful of times each week.
“ …. It’s all about consistency. It’s like golfing. I mean it’s about being a consistent ball striker and that’s what they’re working on. And freaking love this group, man. I mean we got NFL-type specialists. We have NFL-type kickers. We have two snappers in (Matthew) Salansky and Bennett Brady that can freaking play the NFL. But we’re at Tennessee, man. And if we don’t have that, Coach Heup should tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, go find a job. Go down the road. Because that’s what we got.”
Ekeler’s unit will be put to the test as fall practice wraps up, with an opening-day kicker still to be determined.
