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DEREK DOOLEY MEDIA LUNCHEON
“I know everybody is
excited; I certainly am. One thing I always think is important –
anytime you turn the clock and there is a new phase where you have some
specific goals for what you want to accomplish in training camp, as we
always do with our team, there are a whole bunch of them but the gist
of it is we want to first establish a foundation of core values that
define how we compete and how we work together as a team. I don’t
care what team you have, every year you have to start over on things
such as attitude and discipline and toughness and effort –
it’s the same stuff. We aren’t reinventing the wheel. We
always want to improve fundamentally and learn all of our technical
aspects on offense, defense and special teams. This will be especially
important this year given how young we are. This is going to be a very
important training camp to evaluate our personnel across the board.
Sometimes you come into camp, not a lot of questions. That’s not
the case here. As always we are going to continue what we started
earlier in the year just about redefining the standard here and
developing a sense of pride in being a Vol and understanding what it
means to be a Tennessee Volunteer. Those are kind of the short-term
goals, and certainly you don’t accomplish them at the end; you
never really get there. It is a continued journey that we had a good
start on for the summer.
“Talking to Coach
Mack (Ron McKeefery, strength coach), the thing that we feel really
good about is we feel like we have improved our strength, speed,
explosiveness across the board at every position. All the combine
testing data – that’s about the only data you can use to
evaluate where you are, whether it’s bench, 225, squat, vertical
jump, 40s – all of those things have seen significant improvement
across the board. Hopefully that will translate into better play on the
field.
“The second thing
from the summer was trying to develop this team as a team, going from
being a coach-led team to being a player-led team. Because we had so
many seniors and so many vocal seniors last year, I think in some ways
it hamstrung the ability of the young guys to really take ownership
from a vocal standpoint, from a leadership standpoint. And that’s
OK, but it means that you now have to start working toward that.
“Some roster
developments: you will see that we have 104 reporting. You will notice
that Tino Thomas and Geraldo Orta are not on the 104; both of them had
shoulder surgeries this summer. One of them might become one of the
105; we have about a week to figure that out. So they’re still
here, still in summer school, we’re still rehabbing them and then
we will decide where we go on that last spot. You will see 19 other
newcomers on scholarship, a total of 79 on scholarship. That’s
where we are and maybe 80 if one of those two becomes (available). It
will take us three full recruiting years to get up to 85, and
that’s OK. We are way ahead of where we were a year ago.
“Austin Johnson
– we were all disappointed when we read the news and we are
disappointed anytime a player makes a bad choice that puts a negative
light on our program. We are handling that issue internally. There are
several things we are going to do with Austin and I am comfortable with
where we are on that. He will be out there the first day. He is
eligible to play and we hope we do not have any more headlines like
that again.
“Injury situations,
updates – Ben Martin will be out there, but we can’t forget
that he hasn’t played a down since I have been the coach here so
we are going to ease him into this stuff. We don’t want to go out
there full-go the first day and something go bad. Antonio Richardson
had a shoulder surgery in the spring and he is day-to-day. He is not
100 percent, but he is doing great. He can still bench press more than
98 percent of the team, but we have to ease him in. He will be out of
contact early on. Jacques Smith seems to be full-go. Again, we have to
manage him a little bit. Herman Lathers – he’s still a
couple of months away so he is not going to be in the 104. Just so you
know the rules, the first day of classes you can have unlimited. Really
the 105 is from today up until the first day of classes, which on our
calendar is about two and a half weeks. He (Lathers) will be here for
first day and we will be rehabbing him. C.J. Fleming is not listed in
the 104. He is still on the team; he will be back the first day of
classes. Toney Williams is transferring. He is not in the 104. I
don’t know where he is going. We wish him the best.
“Same practice
structure as last year. The first three days we are going to split the
squad, so all the newcomers plus about 30 more are going to practice.
Its coaches’ two-a-days so the upperclassmen two-deep are going
to be in the afternoon and then the newcomers and more guys will be at
night. It’s a great three-day window for us to really evaluate
the newcomers especially – get them some hands-on coaching; you
don’t have the veterans out there around them. After that we can
make some decisions going forward.
“We have a new
practice schedule in the fall. Monday is going to be our day off. That
is a change from last year. Also we are going to a.m. practices on
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I have spoken about that before. I
don’t make those kinds of decisions on a whim. I have spent about
three years wanting to do this and finally felt comfortable enough
where I think it’s going to help our football team and help us
academically. For the media, our press conference is still on Monday
with the same availability. I think the only difference is not having
that Monday practice.
“Obviously, I have
talked a lot about our team in the spring and summer and there’s
no sense revisiting that. We know we’re young. We know we
aren’t going to use that as an excuse for failure. We have some
guys who flashed a lot of good things last year but nobody really who
played 12 games consistently in a championship way. So it’s time
to quit talking, get on the field and see what we can develop here the
next few weeks before kickoff.”
You talked about it, but
from everything that happened last year to you see this being a more of
a player-led team over a coach-led team?
“I think you have to
start over every year. The best teams I’ve been around have
ownership in the locker room. The coaches don’t have to go manage
all their day-to-day issues. They are like professionals, and the
coaches put their energy on teaching and coaching – on how to
make them successful on the field. Every team’s unique and you
never can take that for granted, and this team because we don’t
have a lot of guys with a lot of experience, you just have to develop
it.”
You talk about guys
being senior leaders and wanting leadership, and then a senior like
Austin Johnson goes out and do something stupid. Do you consider that
when determining what his punishment would be, the expectations you
have for a senior?
“It’s a great
point, and I think we were all shocked and disappointed when we saw it
because he’s never really given any indication that he would do
something like that and, also, because he probably had one of the best
summers from a commitment standpoint, from a leadership standpoint.
It’s a great reminder to all of us that you can never take that
for granted and you’re only one bad decision away from hurting
your reputation.
“Did I take that into
consideration? I don’t really think I did. I try to do it how I
do with all these players, whether it’s what kind of harm they
caused to our program, what were the facts around it, how bad was his
choice, what are the legal ramifications. There are a lot of things you
consider, but I don’t think I considered that standpoint. I can
tell you this – there’s nobody who hurts more about what
happened than Austin. And you who know Austin know that.”
Some of the offensive
linemen were joking that they have a goal of helping Tauren Poole reach
2,000 yards. How important is it to set realistic goals and how do you
drive that into the players?
“I’ve never
been one to put these number goals – that’s great if they
have that, but I think it’s a dangerous way to go. I do think you
have to be realistic but you always should be shooting for things. We
have our goals, in that we know we want to win an SEC and a national
championship.
“It’s good to
have that, but your focus can’t be on getting 2,000 yards; your
focus has to be on what we have to do get that goal. And as long as
your focus is on the right stuff, I don’t think it matters what
goal you have. The goal’s really there to keep driving you when
things get hard or when it gets tough; it’s a reminder of why
we’re doing what we’re doing. But your day-to-day focus has
to be on what are the things I need to do today to get to that
goal.”
How does your handle on
the roster compare to this day a year ago?
“It’s a lot
better now but there’s still the same amount of uncertainty in a
lot of areas. Here we have one player in our front seven (on defense)
who has the proven ability to go out there and play down after down.
The uncertainty is still there. What’s happened is it’s
kind of shifted from offense to defense.
“Last year coming in
on offense, I didn’t know who was going to play on the offensive
line; this year, I’ve got a pretty good idea. On defense,
it’s the opposite. We had a pretty good feel for who was going to
play; we didn’t know who was going to be any good. There’s
still a lot of uncertainly in a lot of areas, but we do have a better
handle on what we think.”
When you look at the
secondary, are you planning to play a lot more nickel to cover up some
of that work from the back four?
“About 50 percent of
the game is nickel now anyway with the amount of subs that people play.
Half the time you’re out there, guys are in three-wides or more.
So that helps you if you are deep in the secondary, and you better be
deep. The question is will you play nickel on regular downs – I
don’t know.
Time’s going to tell
on a lot of this. It helps at least having a lot of bodies back there.
We don’t know if any of them can play, but there are a lot more
capable bodies.”
Tyler says he’s up
to 202 pounds; is he getting big enough for you?
“As long as he can
take the hits and elude the pass rush, I’m OK. A lot of his
strength issues are really more core. It affects, sometimes, your
ability to throw the ball down the field accurately when you’re
off-balance. That’s where those big strong guys – it makes
a difference. The other area is to be durable, taking the hits.”
A lot of the guys say
they have gained weight. What is (Ron) McKeefery doing differently than
the guys in the past?
“If I were to sum it
up, we push more heavy weight more often. It’s a little less
aerobic and more pushing around heavy weight, which is what you do in a
football game. You’re pushing around heavy guys a lot. So
it’s a little bit more in line with what I believe
philosophically. Ron has a nice combination of having intelligence from
his industry – he’s a smart guy who can talk with the best
of them on the intellectual part of his industry that nobody
understands, including me. He’s got enough of the drill sergeant
in him to motivate and push the guys the way they need to. That’s
the hard thing with a strength coach – some guys are great drill
sergeants and are doing things that probably you shouldn’t do,
and then some guys are really intelligent and they’ve got the
computer and these nice reports, but they’re not pushing the
guys. And the key is having that blend.”
Greg Schiano at Rutgers
has proposed doing away with the kickoff.
“We may as well take
the pads off too and play flag football. It’s hard for me to
propose doing away with a play that’s been in football since
– we call it foot-ball. What’s your question?”
How do you coach it (the
kickoff) safer, or what do you do?
“The most important
thing is teaching the proper way to tackle. What’s happened is,
and I really mean this, we’ve softened this game up at every
level and then they get to our level and they don’t know some of
the basic fundamentals of how to tackle and how to block that are the
safe ways to do them. We spend a lot of time teaching how to tackle;
the elements of a tackle. A lot of injuries occur when there’s
reckless technique of tackling. That’s when the injuries really
occur the most. That’s not always the case. There’s that
inevitable ‘force equals mass times acceleration’ –
it’s going to hurt. The concussion thing is a serious thing and
I’m not minimizing that.”
You’ve talked
about the young roster. Is maybe a flip side of that the fact that
50-some of these guys are guys you recruited and who have only played
for you and know your system?
“That’s a
positive, certainly. Those guys, I sat in their living room, I know
what their makeup is, I have a better feel for the things we probably
shouldn’t do when we coach them and the things that can motivate
them a little bit. You have a better feel for the guys and, hopefully,
they chose this school because they believed in our coaches and our
system. That’s a real positive.”
Do you feel the
sophomore class is mostly your guys too – even though some of
them came in before you?
“The ones we signed,
I do.”
Getting back to Tyler
Bray and this team being player-led team, what’s your sense of
where he is from over the summer in terms of being a leader?
“Everything
I’ve heard has been positive from that standpoint, and it starts
with his level of commitment. You earn the respect to be a leader, to
me, based on your level of commitment to the program. People have a
hard time respecting somebody if they don’t see them committed to
doing everything they can do to help us win. And I think he’s
proving that to our team. Again, it’s a work in progress.”
What kind of contact do
you have with him, or are you allowed to have with him?
“Yeah, I’ve
seen him, I’ve talked to him, we’ve had some discussions.
‘How’s it going?’ You know. ‘How’s
school?’ I don’t disappear for two months; it’s hard
for me to.”
Ever since you’ve
been here you’ve been talking more strength and size than you
have speed – I know you want your guys to be fast. But especially
on defense, is that still a theme and is it reflected more on your
recruiting class this year that maybe you’ve gotten bigger and
stronger?
“Yes, but
speed’s in there too. The thing I mentioned so much about size
and strength is because it’s so noticeable when they’re
just standing there; we don’t even get to the running part. You
feel like you’re beat from the beginning. I made the comment in
the 192 speeches I made the last two months that big fast guys usually
beat up little slow guys. We forget that. We get all these fancy
evaluation techniques as coaches, but usually you’ve got a better
chance to win with the big fast guy than with the slow little guy. I
felt like our signing class this year from a height-weight-speed
standpoint, we improved at every position. Now that doesn’t mean
they’re going to be better players and that doesn’t mean
you sign bad players who are big and fast and you don’t sign good
players who have some deficiencies. But over the course of your team,
there have to be some minimum height-weight-speed standards you adhere
to.”
Do you still think that
when you line up opposing SEC teams and have the guys out there in
shorts and t-shirts that those other guys are going to look better than
yours will?
“That’s the
first thing I do in pregame; I look at their guys and I look at our
guys and just get a little feeling. Sometimes I go, ‘OK,
we’re going to be all right;’ and then sometimes I go,
‘This is going to be a hard one.’ I think every coach does
that, and then they go back in the locker room and say, ‘Did you
see 67? Holy smokes, I didn’t know he was that big!’
That’s pregame.”
How much of a
contribution do you need from this freshman class and what areas do you
think could maybe give them quicker?
“I think we’re
going to need them at just about every position; if not from a starter,
from a role guy, from a spell guy and from a guy who can go out there
and push the guy ahead of them to be better. It’s hard to say
you’re not going to need them in some capacity.”
Are there any particular
positions where they could be there quicker?
“I don’t know.
It’s too early to tell for that.”
With the uncertainty on
defense, there is a lot of junior college influx of talent. Could you
talk about the anticipation and what you expect to see from those
players?
“We only have three,
so I wouldn’t say it’s a lot. Two or three guys a year is
probably what you want and we’ll see. Byron (Moore) is a little
different because he’s not truly a junior college guy; he’s
a 4-2-4 (four-year/two-year/four-year) transfer. So we really only have
two junior college guys academically, but we obviously took them in the
areas where we felt like we needed some immediate help – d-line
and secondary – and we’ll see if they can provide it.”
Is Byron playing safety
or corner?
“We don’t know
yet. A lot of the guys, we just don’t know. There are a lot of
guys who we’ve got to go out there and evaluate and see where
they fit in.”
With a fuller roster at
more positions, are you able to do more in August to push them so you
won’t wear them out? Will you be able to make it easier on them
during that time?
“We had 104 guys come
in last year too; we just didn’t have the scholarships. We still
had bodies, so you could still work them the same from a body
standpoint.”
What concerns to you
have with your kicker and punter?
“They’re new,
like a lot of the other positions. Michael Palardy played, so
he’s a little bit like the freshmen who played last year. You
feel like he’s going to be OK. He struggled on kickoffs, so
we’ve got to improve there. And Matt Darr, I wouldn’t trade
him for anybody but he’s never played. He’s a very talented
punter. It’s just a matter of getting out there and going through
the growing pains; I think he’s going to be a great punter for us
in time.
“The things you worry
about are the growing pains. What are the growing pains that are going
to come with this? Some of them aren’t that bad and some of them
really look bad. You’ve just got to stay true to the
process.”
Your offensive line had
so many freshmen playing last year, what kind of growing pains are
there?
“What we hope is the
growing pains are behind us on the offensive line; they should be. Now
it’s time to go out there and perform. Even though they
haven’t done it over 12 games, they certainly have plenty of
experience and they’ve had a lot of growth in their chemistry. We
need them to be a position that we don’t really worry about, and
they should be. That’s how a lot of our positions should look. We
feel like we are talented there; we feel like we are deeper there than
most positions. Now it’s just a matter of going out there and
producing.”
What role will
(Prentiss) Waggner have? Will he play safety or corner?
“He could play a
little bit of everything. Guys, a lot of these positions, especially in
the secondary, we’ve got to get out there and evaluate our new
guys and evaluate the returning guys to see how much improvement
they’ve made on some of these crossover positions. There are a
lot of crossover guys in the secondary; they’re certainly that
way at linebacker and a little bit on the defensive line, but not much.
That’s really the bulk of it.”
Is Janzen (Jackson) one
of those guys you need to see after his being gone so long? Prentiss
said Janzen could be gone for five years and still test out as the best
guy.
“I would say longer
than that, he could. What I want to see from him is where his
conditioning level is; his stamina. I think that’s what he loses
more than anything. And when we get in pads, he’s going to be
really rusty tackling and all that stuff. He can go out there and run
and jump with no problem, but that doesn’t make you a good
football player. He’s got a long way to go from that standpoint.
The biggest thing from Janzen is putting him in pads, because he missed
all of spring.”
Is there something he
has to prove to you where he has his job back?
“No, not his job. But
he does to stay in the program like all the players. He’s like
the rest of them; they’ve got to prove it every day by how they
represent the program, and he’s no different from the rest of
them. But we’re not going to put him on third team.”
It seems like Zach
Rogers has been plagued by injuries. How much production do you think
he could really have over the season and is that third wide receiver
slot pretty open at this point?
“Yeah. Zach’s
problem has been durability. He’s got skills. He can run fast; he
can catch and he runs good routes. But every time he has a good game,
he’s out for three. That’s his issue. If he can become a
durable player, he’s certainly got all the capabilities and we
need him to.”
Who else do you like in
that third spot?
“Vincent Dallas had a
good spring. He came out of there competing with Zach in that third
spot, and we’ll see how these new guys come in and look.”
When you look at your
record as a head coach, it seems you’ve won the games
you’re supposed to win.
“Thanks, John.”
Well, there’ve not
been any upsets. You’ve come really close to some major upsets.
Is that of any significance to you? Do you look at it and wonder why
you haven’t had any major upsets, or is that just happenstance?
“We’ve had a
couple, but we’ve a lot of close ones. Mississippi State was a
big upset when I was at La-Tech. You hope you look at it and say we
were really out-manned and we did a good job and had a chance to win
down the stretch. But you beat yourself up for why you didn’t
close it out. I can remember all the games – starting with Hawaii
my second game as a head coach. They were undefeated that year and had
a great football team. We didn’t have any business being on the
field with them and we took them to overtime. But there have been a lot
of them where you had a good chance and didn’t finish it off.
Hopefully as you keep coaching and keep improving your talent level
where there’s not a big discrepancy, eventually it will turn for
you.”
As the university
continues to search for an athletics director, you’ve held that
position in the past. What qualities would you like to see in a
candidate?
“I don’t really
want to comment on that because that’s in the chancellor’s
hands, and whatever qualities I might think they have are irrelevant.
I’m not picking and I’m not on the search committee.
I’ve got a boss right now and that’s Joan (Cronan), and
she’s done a great job for me. When I get a new one, I’ll
shake hands and say, ‘Let’s go to work.’
“I certainly hope the
person is supportive of our program and me, and understands what the
Tennessee fans expect from Tennessee football. I think that’s
important, because if they don’t then decisions are going to get
made that are not going to allow the program to continue to
prosper.”
Will you keep (James)
Stone at center and are you comfortable with where he is snapping it
right-handed?
“Yeah, but
we’ll also work him at some other positions just like Alex
(Bullard). We try to have most of our o-linemen – not all of
them, but the ones who can – at least learn one other position.
Because the real key is when you lose a guy – this is where it
gets hard – do you put the next best offensive lineman in the
game or do you put the guy behind him? That’s a continuing
debate. If the guy behind him is your 10th-best offensive lineman, you
better put your sixth-best lineman in and figure out how to make it
work. That’s what I’ve always done. Because of that,
you’ve got to have some guys with some flexibility.”
Do you feel like you
have three centers, or three guys who could play center?
“We’ve got
three more than we had last year, but I don’t know if we’ve
got three.”
You have Anthony
Anderson listed as the punt returner coming out of spring, but is that
as wide open as any position on the team?
“Yes. Anthony will be back there because he came out of spring as
the guy who is probably the most natural on our team. But we’re
certainly going to develop these newcomers to see who can get back
there and provide a little spark for us. We hope somebody will.
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