Notes and Observations from Tennessee's 4-6-21 Practice

Notes and Observations from Tennessee's 4-6-21 Practice

Tennessee returned to the practice field on Tuesday afternoon with a little warmer weather than last week. The Vols will scrimmage on Thursday and have an open practice on Saturday. I share my quick hitters from the day's outing below.

I felt like the quarterbacks struggled with consistency at times with the limited viewing we had.  Tennessee worked double moves into the boundaries and each guy had their misses but did recover. Harrison Bailey threw one dart during this setting, as he paced the way in most of drills. 

On the wideout front, Jalin Hyatt was back in shoulder pads which is good for Tennessee. Hyatt and Wideman worked out on their own for a bit, as Tennessee has remained careful, bringing them bag from nagging injuries.

Last week we touched on Glen Elarbee's laid back style. He proved us wrong today. Elarbee was demanding excellence from his players and had them working hard through drills, with repeated calls to "strain" harder. He got after his position grouping today. Really liked what I saw from Dayne Davis today. The former walk-on has received a lot of praise, and he looked the part today.

Rodney Garner, Mike Ekeler and Alex Golesh all remained very hands-on, with all three guys intense throughout the 20-minute media period. Garner does not want excellence; he demands it. He coached up all of his guys very hard and went out of his way to verbalize that he did not like the way Tyler Baron went through a drill. Baron responded with a better effort and received praise.

Len'Neth Whitehead remained in a non-contact jersey but went through drills. Lineman James Robinson was not present today, as he was at home last week dealing with the death of his grandmother. Other than that, I did not see any noticeable absences today, but will double-check after I review more film.

I had little time to see the inside linebackers, but Tennessee remains thin there, especially with Aaron Beasley not on the field.

The receivers struggled with some drops during routes on air, but Tennessee looked to be working some more advanced routes that had both the receivers and quarterbacks timing off a bit.

Josh Heupel spent time saying something to multiple players during warm-ups as we walked onto the field. It appeared Heupel was going through to say something to each guy. He will speak with the media later today.