Everything Tennessee offensive coordinator Joey Halzle talks after Thursday's practice

What Tennessee football offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Joey Halzle said after Thursday’s practice, as the Vols continue to prepare for the September 2 season-opener against Virginia:

Balance the rush attempts between three Tennessee running backs (Jaylen Wright, Jabari Small and Dylan Sampson)

“All three of those guys and the true freshmen (Cameron Selden, Khalifa Keith) we got are all playing on a really high level. Our job is to find creative ways to give em the ball and realize their skillset. You’re exactly right though. Hot hand, sometimes a guy gets rolling and you don’t take that guy out of the ball game, but the way we play with tempo and the amount of snaps we’re gonna get, man, just because you’re not the first guy on the field doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t end up getting the most carries that day. It’s just rolling guys through, making sure everyone stays fresh and that we always have a guy on the field that’s capable of ready to go in that moment and not gassed out.” 

How he feels about Tennessee’s offensive line and settling on five guys or rotating players at multiple positions

“Feel really good about how the offensive line is looking. There are guys that can rotate in and play a bunch of spots. That’s what’s really good about the guys we have is guys can go in and out. We got guys can play all three positions, so it’s really helpful having that kind of utilization with guys up front. Feel really good about the five we’re gonna roll out there with in a couple weeks and feel like we can put a good product on the field with them.” 

How long it took Joe Milton III to get comfortable with the mechanical adjustments the Tennessee staff has made to his game

“He’s the type of athlete that he can feel his body so he understood what we were trying to accomplish quickly. It would just be making it the habit of that’s just how I throw it. Because an individual, you start building it, then you take it to routes on air, you take it to seven-on-seven and maybe it doesn’t look quite the same. Then you go back to (individual drills) and you push it. So just over this offseason, it just kept incrementally getting better. It wasn’t like one day off, one day on. It was a growth throughout the whole thing where it just becomes that’s how you can throw now where it’s not like, hey, I have to try to do it. That’s just the way he throws now.” 

If Tennessee coaches have seen Joe Milton slip back into his old mechanics at any point

“You don’t really see it very often. Like every once in a while naturally playing football, you’re gonna get yourself in a bad body position. It is what it is. There’s gonna be a free rush or there’s gonna be someone busting on a route. But now my body’s in a weird spot. So we actually work drills to help us get out of bad situations. So I guess human nature, every once in a while you miss with a mechanical function, but for the most part we’re able to to replicate really well and keep the same motion.” 

How Tennessee tight ends McCallan Castles and Ethan Davis have improved in blocking 

“It’s been great watching them from spring to fall camp. Cali was just learning, you know what I mean? He played in a system that wasn’t going fast at all, so his whole thing was not playing as fast as he could because he was just learning what to do and now that he’s dialed in on everything, that’s a big strong dude that’ll come off the ball and hit you. It’s fun to watch it. He’ll strike people like an old school fullback, but then he can run like you’re saying, like a slot and be a matchup issue for safeties. Ethan, he lived that world of playing a lot of receiver coming out of high school. He has no fear of getting in there and mixing it up with people, put his face on people. 

“So it has been good watching him. It’s very similar to Cali where you go from learning what to do, like what’s my step, what’s my (assignment). I get the backside handle, I get the defensive end running through you, I know what to do now. I’ll come off and shoot my hands and put my face in there. So he’s still got some growth to do in that area, but the best thing that you see with a young tight end that hasn’t done it a lot is he’s not scared.”

If Tennessee’s offensive tempo has been an issue with center Cooper Mays out

“No issues with our (tempo), that’s how we play. Everybody knows how we play. We play one type of way when we take the field, so we’re gonna roll.”

Joe Milton building relationships with receivers and other Tennessee players more than he did in 2021

“I think it comes in a lot like when you come in midyear like him, he wasn’t even in January, he was here in June. I think sometimes you have to be a little intrinsically focused because you’re just trying to learn and give yourself a chance to go get on the field. But it almost feels you don’t have time to do that part of it, which playing that position is a huge part of having everyone bought into you as a person, as opposed to just you as a player. So as he’s gotten more comfortable here, more comfortable in his role, it’s really as his understanding of the offense has grown, where he’s not worried about that part of it, he’s been able to put some energy, put a lot of his energy towards bringing the next group of guys along and making sure he’s got that type of real relationship with his team.” 

If they’ve seen enough from young Tennessee receivers to make them think they could be in the receiver rotation

“Yeah, we’ve got five or six guys we feel really comfortable rolling with, keeping guys fresh. Like similar to my conversation with the running backs. Roll guys through, guys keep playing. You feel really confident with, with that.”

Going through this training camp in his first season as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator

“As far as like the game planning, I said it when I first took this role, we’ve all done that all together. Like that’s never just been a one person shows up and says this is how we’re doing it. It’s extremely communal. The staff’s been awesome around me, so it’s been a great transition. It hasn’t been like drinking through a fire hose. There are more (responsibilities), as far as going into a meeting time, like I have to have everything prepped on the front end. I can’t just show up and take my notes and can’t just stare at my quarterback as we’re watching tape and see how that’s going. You gotta see what everybody’s doing and making sure the whole thing hangs together perfectly. So as far as an adjustment, that would be the main (one). I also gotta talk a whole lot more.  Like you gotta talk a lot. I’m kind done talking about the end of the day … (I’m not) a big talker, you know what I mean? But that’s the main part of it is the front end. Everything’s on you to make sure it’s prepared. So everyone else gonna have a smooth transition through their day.”

How Tennessee coaches go about training young players to play offense at this speed and with this tempo

“We show continuous tape. We call it all mechanics of how everything should operate between the snap. And the biggest thing we have to drive home to our young guys or our transfers coming in is it’s not a fire drill out there, everyone running around crazy. All it is is efficiency between the snaps, operate efficiently between the snap and you’re gonna be fine. If you’re all over the place between the snap, you’re gonna have a hard time functioning. Like that’s boilerplate level what it is to be able to play it like we do.” 

At what point in the offseason Joe Milton began to take ownership of this Tennessee football team

“It’s really been since bowl prep last year. When it was very clear at that point with, Hendon’s injury and everything that it was his team to take over. He didn’t shy away from it, but he also didn’t become fake and like change the way he was. He was just him and with a new, dedicated new spirit about it where he just said, all right, this is like, I’m responsible for this unit now I gotta make sure that it’s going the way to go.” 

The dynamic in the slot between Tennessee receivers Dont’e Thornton and Squirrel White

“It’s been great. It’s very similar to what we talked about in the quarterback room. We have guys that actually support each other and very similar again to the running back question. Like the way we play, there’s not a shortage of snaps to go around. There’s not a shortage of opportunities to catch balls. So we don’t really get a lot of that backbiting in the locker room. It’s a very amicable workspace for everybody and you go get yours, come off the field, I’ll go get mine. That’s kind of the mindset for a lot of our skillset guys.”