University of Tennessee Athletics
A Long Wait To Build An Identity
August 04, 2015 | Football
Aug. 4, 2015
MEDIA INTERVIEWS: JONES DOBBS BARNETT CROOM KERBYSON MAGGITT SUTTON
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By Brian Rice
UTSports.com
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- With the familiar sound of the blown air horn ringing across Haslam Field, Tennessee was back to work for the start of fall camp on Tuesday evening. As the horn sounded, the Volunteers began to write the story on Team 119, 1 percent at a time.
Tennessee's summer session had players in class during the day, meaning training camp began under the lights for the second-straight season. The wait of a long summer was a little bit longer as players finished classes before hitting the field for the first time in 2015.
"It was what you would expect on a first day but I really liked the approach of our football team," Butch Jones said following the session. "It was a long day with a full day of classes and meetings, but I thought our players did a great job of handling it."
Those extra few hours had senior offensive lineman Mack Crowder even more excited to finally be on the field with his teammates.
"It was great to be back out here with the guys playing the sport you love," Crowder said. "In the offseason you go through a lot of workouts and you kind of get some football stuff, but there's nothing like putting the helmet back on and getting after it with the guys you've worked really with over the summer."
The opening practice was embraced by the Volunteers as the first step in building the identity of Team 119, an identity that players said they wanted to be defined by toughness and physicality.
Quarterback Joshua Dobbs knows that the tone for that identity can be set by the leadership he provides at his position.
"We're a new team trying to make a name for ourselves," Dobbs said. "We're Team 119. It doesn't matter what we did last year, other teams don't look at what we did last year. We have our expectations and our goals that we want to achieve and we're grinding toward those every day."
Dobbs is not the only player leading both in voice and by example. Junior defensive back Cameron Sutton was singled out by players and coaches alike as providing the example for the rest of the Volunteers.
"Cam Sutton continues to impress as a leader," Jones said. "Obviously, he impresses as a football player as well, but I saw leadership opportunities today and he took care of that."
It's a part of moving toward the player-led program that Jones wants to build.
"We have a lot more leadership on this team," sophomore running back Jalen Hurd said. "This first day was really intense. All of the older guys are coaching up the younger guys. We did that some last year, but it's more and more this year and we're seeing improvement."
Improvement is a key theme for training camp. Jones said in his preseason press conference that the Vols could not just be one year older, they had to be one year better. To achieve that goal, the focus in camp is to get 1 percent better every day, a message that each player has taken to heart.
"If you come with the mentality that I'm going to get better at one thing each day, by the time the season comes, you should be able to look back and be proud of the results you had during camp," Crowder said.
It is only one session, so it may be early to signal mission accomplished, but it was exactly the start Jones was looking for from his team.
"I like what I've seen so far, but it's only day one," Jones said. We got 1 percent better today."
