While some may look at Kennesaw State week as a breather before No. 1 Texas, you couldn’t be more wrong. The No. 15 Tennessee football team is focused on the task at hand, and knows that there are some important things to clean up this week. Yes, we get it. Texas is next week for the start of Southeastern Conference play, but everyone from coach Josh Heupel down, isn’t looking past Kennesaw. Also, no one is satisfied with anything yet.
On Monday and Tuesday words that I have heard heavily are fundamentals, discipline, and clean up. At 2-0, the Vols have not played near their best. After all, it is still early and nobody is perfect regardless of what records show. Things such as penalties, using the correct techniques, and just staying true to who Tennessee is, are a great focus this week. The 21-point win at Georgia Tech has been put to bed, but the lessons to carry from that game are still fresh on the minds of everyone.
Tuesday, Tennessee linebacker Amare Campbell spoke on those things and what the Vols must do this Saturday vs. the Owls. Campbell has started off the season well, currently with a team leading 14 total tackles. He’s a part of a linebacker group that has and will wreak havoc to opposing offenses, but isn’t hanging his hat on anything yet.
“I feel like we’re never satisfied,” Campbell said. “We’re always trying to build a better product, build a better defense. There’s always room for improvement, so I wouldn’t say he’s satisfied.”
For Campbell, that room for improvement lives in the details. Which is another word that’s heavily used around the Vols’ camp.
“Just the little things, like penalties, stuff like that,” Campbell said. “We can’t have penalties, and just the techniques, when we’re not playing the right coverage or we’re not playing with our proper techniques. We got to clean up those little things.”
Knowing the standard and hitting it in real time are two different things. Practice makes perfect has always been a cliche in sports, but sometimes things don’t transition as well as you’d like. The gap between the practice field and Saturday’s has to close.
Campbell mentioned making practice reps as game-like as possible, and alluded to the fix being trust. When the techniques carry over from practice, the thinking slows down and the reaction takes over.
The secondary is having that same conversation. Cornerbacks coach Derek Jones graded his group a C-plus coming out of Georgia Tech, and not because of the scoreboard.
“I told those guys, coming out of the game, I think we were probably at a C-plus,” Jones said. “And the reason I say that is because I’ve been trying to harp on where we have to get to, to be as good as we can be.”
The biggest thing to clean up was tackling. Tennessee missed four against the Yellow Jackets, and at corner a miss usually turns into points.
“At our position, when you miss tackles, they turn into explosive plays,” Jones said. “They turn into touchdowns.”
Those misses didn’t cost the Vols this time. Jones just wants them fixed before Tennessee runs into an offense that can punish them, which is why he is harping on the little things now, while they don’t hurt as much.
The corners also haven’t been tested deep enough through two games. Jones wants to see how a faster, deeper room holds up when they finally are.
“Cornerback comes down to making tackles and playing the deep ball, and we hadn’t been in that situation a lot,” Jones said. “So me as a coach and those guys as players are all anxious to be put in those moments, because that’s the only way we’re gonna improve.”
As for what is next, Campbell isn’t ready to let the conversation jump to Texas and the SEC opener. Kennesaw State comes first.
“Definitely curious. That’s coming up,” Campbell said of SEC play. “But we got Kennesaw State this week, so we gotta clean up a lot of stuff and focus on them this week, to prepare us for SEC play.”
