Tennessee football worked inside the Anderson Training Center on Monday morning for its 10th practice of fall camp.
Tennessee saved the sanctity of the program by closing off period three and only letting the media watch the first two periods of practice today. That could lead to at least one or two more wins on the field this season, but it does lead to fewer observations today as we only watched 10 minutes of practice and they were stretching for three to five minutes.
With that, it’s on to notes and observations.
More From RTI: Tennessee Receiver Bru McCoy Moves Out Of Red Non Contact Jersey
Offense
Let’s start with injuries and absences of note. There really wasn’t any key offensive players working to the side or in a red non contact jersey besides Cam Seldon remaining in his red non contact uniform
Mike Matthews was fully dressed out as was fellow freshman Braylon Staley. John Campbell Jr. and Andrej Karic were both dressed out and went through drills while we were at practice. Cooper Mays was also dressed out but he was not going through drills during the portion of practice that was open.
The same was the case for Dylan Sampson who was dressed out but also was standing off to the side while the running backs did drills.
During the quarterback-running back handoff drills, Nico Iamaleava was working with both DeSean Bishop and Peyton Lewis.
Tight ends did some blocking work on the sleds before moving over to work with the quarterbacks in a brief routes on air portion of practice. Iamaleava was throwing to Bru McCoy, Ethan Davis, Squirrel White and Kaleb Webb while Gaston Moore was throwing to Dont’e Thornton, Miles Kitselman, Chas Nimrod and Chris Brazzell.
Besides one bad Bru McCoy drop, it was a relatively crisp portion of practice. The Vols worked on short in-breaking routes as well as curl routes. I didn’t watch the entirety of the period so that I could go watch the defense and find a few takeaways there.
Defense
There were a few more absences on the defensive side of the ball though few of them were truly significant players. Walk on freshman Jackson Matthews— grandson of former Tennessee assistant Doug Matthews— was in a red non contact uniform while linebackers Jordan Burns and Ben Bolton were not dressed out.
The most important defensive injury note was that sophomore cornerback Rickey Gibson was working off to the side and not going through drills. He was fully dressed out.
The defensive back field continued to work on a number of zone defense concepts as they went through routes on one side of the field at half speed and practice hand offs. They worked in two different groups so they could go through things faster.
Defensive coordinator and secondary coach Tim Banks was having a conversation with Jakobe Thomas off to the side where they talked through some stuff. An MTSU transfer, Thomas is going to step into a big role in his first season in the program.
Both Jalen McMurray and Christian Harrison went through drills with the rest of the defensive backs though McMurray was in a right knee brace and Harrison was in an left arm brace.
It was business as usual for the linebackers and defensive line. Linebackers worked on block shedding drills while then wrapping up a mock ball carrier. The defensive line did its usual circuit of footwork drills. Through two weeks of camp, that group remains very healthy to this point and continues to look like the strength of the team.
