Even with players out, Tennessee program shows great progress

Don Mahoney is a worrier, sweating the small details and oftentimes barking orders for his offensive linemen to repeat even the simplest tasks if any one thing is amiss.

So sleepless nights aren’t anything unusual for Tennessee’s offensive line coach. And still, despite the absences this spring of stalwart guard Jashon Robertson and potential elite tackle Chance Hall, Mahoney finds more hours’ rest than in his first Knoxville spring.

“Not as much now. I still do, but not nearly as much,” Mahoney, an avid runner, says of his restless nights. “And again, it’s just the overall, as it has been with Coach Jones, a time period from Year 1 to Year 3, wherever it’s been from Central Michigan to Cincinnati to here, I think it’s just the overall temperament of the team itself and the position of the offense. I think it’s just the whole gamut.”

Real, 11-on-11 football is expected to be such a scarcity Saturday afternoon inside Neyland Stadium that statistics probably need not be logged for the fourth installment of Butch Jones’ Theater of Hype, aka the Orange & White Game.

Probably no one remembers that Alden Hill ran for 100 yards in that spring game but didn’t accumulate any significant burn for the Vols before transferring out of the program. Too, the Vols’ quarterbacks that day rank among the more abysmal exhibition compilations, completing 18 of 43 passes --- 41.8 percent --- to go along with a pair of interceptions.

It doesn’t matter.

Even with nearly 20 scholarship players expecting to be held out, and even with Butch Jones’ smallest group of midyear enrollees in his 40 months at the helm, this much will be obvious: Tennessee is a lot better football team, and because of this, a much better football program.

“It would’ve killed us” under similar circumstances in Year 1, Jones told VolQuest.com. “We couldn’t have done it.”

Yet the Vols didn’t have to fill their 2016 signing class by looking extra long at players’ arrival dates and how quickly they might get onto campus to fill holes.

They are prohibitive SEC East favorites because they return so much, add more quality pieces this summer and host arch-nemesis Florida on Sept. 24 with a chance to end more than a decade of futility in that series.

Three years ago, the Vols couldn’t show much in the Orange & White Game because they simply didn’t have much to show.

Now? They’re as much choosing not to show anything other than individual talents because the rest of college football’s care-factor only grows larger between now and Sept. 3, when Tennessee hosts Appalachian State.

“It’s evolved a lot. I just talked to Mr. Finebaum about it,” says Josh Dobbs, referencing a recent SEC Network appearance, “and he was asking me about the expectations and if we see them and how we feel, and I said, ‘I think, you know, the biggest thing it does is show how far the program has come since I’ve been here. We came from no one (outside) really cared what we went during the year to now people are expecting us to compete each year, year in and year out.’

“It just shows the character of the guys on the team and their competitiveness. How much dedication that we’ve put in over the years. So it’s really cool to see the change over time and be a part of it.”

Too, the Vols are seeing the program’s evolution and retaining players into the next season with experience. It isn’t just the decisions of guys such as Cam Sutton, Jalen Reeves-Maybin and Alvin Kamara to return to Rocky Top but also of steadier guys who fill roles and own big moments, such as a Josh Smith.

“We talk about power of the position all the time, and you can’t have power in your position if all you’re doing is football all the time,” Zach Azzanni explains. “There’s no way in the world that fourth-and-8, I guess, versus Georgia that we convert (to Smith) that if those guys don’t fully buy-in and care about each other, care about their position coaches, care about the head coach. There’s no way.

“For those guys in a period like that, I always say this, ‘Rip their chest open, give us their heart’ and you have to get to know them, get to know their families, know what’s going on in their lives and what makes them tick. And they’ve got to know at the drop of a hat, you’ll be there for them at the drop of the hat.”

There’s a little more of that sentiment now within the Tennessee program. It’s why even the most fitful sleepers are getting a touch more rest these days.