University of Tennessee Athletics
Leaders Come Together To Move Vols Forward
October 05, 2015 | Football
By Brian Rice
UTSports.com
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
-- Tennessee meets as a team every Sunday night to review the previous game and set the schedule for the coming game week.
This Sunday, the team’s leaders came together after the full team meeting to strengthen their bond and to focus on what is to come for the football team with Georgia coming to Neyland Stadium on Saturday. The player staff looked inward first, ignoring any outside talk to lock in on the commitment to moving forward after back-to-back conference losses.
“It was good to get in the mindset,” linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin said of the meeting. “We made sure everyone is all in and 100 percent focused on what we need to do to finish with a great season.”
Head Coach Butch Jones was pleased to see his leaders taking ownership of how the team moves forward into Georgia week.
"I’m very encouraged,” Jones said of his feeling after the meeting. “This is a very resilient group, it's a prideful group. They are very realistic, they understand. The message was very, very simple, I always talk the truth, I speak the truth. The truth of the matter is we are a good football team. We've lost to three very, very good opponents.
“I want our players to understand that we are a good football team and it's a long football season ahead of us. It's making us better. I told them they're going to refer back to this whether it's this year, whether it's next year, whether its three years from now, maybe it's 10 years from now in their life. They're going to refer back to this moment in time. This is forging us, it's making us closer, it's making us who we are, we have to own it and move on. Our kids were outstanding, they've been outstanding all year.”
Quarterback Joshua Dobbs agreed with the assessment. He is ready to use the team’s experiences over the season’s first five games to improve the performance and execution over the final seven games.
“It’s a growth in our maturity and our daily mindset of coming to practice trying to get better, improving on our mistakes and really trying to perfect our skills,” Dobbs said. “At the end of the day, it comes down to making the most of our opportunities and growing in that sense.”
The progress that the team has made to this point has been encouraging for Reeves-Maybin, particularly with the young players that are starting to make an impact on the defensive side of the ball. Shy Tuttle, Kahlil McKenzie, Micah Abernathy, Austin Smith and Darrin Kirkland Jr. have all begun to play increased roles as the season has rolled on.
“Seeing the young guys buy in to everything we’re teaching in the program,” Reeves-Maybin said of what made him most excited moving forward. “They are starting to become valuable members of the program, working hard and giving great effort.”
The difficulties to this point have also shown the team’s leaders just how close the team is and how dedicated its members are to moving forward. Dobbs sees no signs from his teammates that outside chatter is having any effect on the mindset and preparation of the team each week.
“This team is so close-knit that we don’t really care about outside talk, we don’t pay any mind to it,” Dobbs said. “I think everyone knows what we need to do in order to improve moving forward. Everyone realizes that and takes ownership of that moving forward.”
The sense of taking ownership is one of the lessons that is bigger than football, something Jones wants his players to embrace now and into the future.
"Tough times challenge you, but I truly believe that they form who you are,” Jones said. “You find out a lot about yourself. Our players have been resilient. They have done a good job, and they understand what needs to happen moving forward, and so does our coaches. Football is like life but just sped up a lot faster. We are going to rely on these experiences. It's going to make us better, but we do have to own it. It's going to make us better.”
