On the eve of Tennessee football fall camp, head coach Josh Heupel, defensive coordinator Tim Banks, offensive coordinator Joey Halzle and select players met with the media on Monday.
The Vols are coming off an 11-2 season and are tasked with replacing several key contributors over the next month before the season kickoff against Virginia at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.
TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM
Here are three takeaways.
Tennessee enters fall camp without a hint of controversy as far as the quarterbacks room is concerned.
Joe Milton III is the undisputed leader heading into his third season in the program and showed as much in two starts to end the 2023 season vs. Vanderbilt and Clemson.
WATCH ON VOLREPORT: Tennessee football coach Josh Heupel previews fall camp
Behind him though, Tennessee only has one other scholarship player and two walk ons. Nico Iamaleava was the jewel of the Vols’ 2023 signing class as a five star prospect and one of the top signal callers in the country.
First-year offensive coordinator Joey Halzle gave Iamaleava a resounding vote of confidence should a situation where he is needed to step in comes up.
“Huge confidence in him,” Halzle said. “That guy is mature beyond his years. He didn’t come in like a true freshman. He came in wanting to learn and not thinking like, ‘I’m a highly rated recruit, I’ve got it figured out.’ He came in understanding, ‘I want to learn. I need to know.’ And the way that guy just has this calmness on the field, his demeanor, I think the guys believe in his as well.
“If he’s called upon to do a job, that dude will step in and compete at a high level and perform at a high level.”
“I think from a young age, I’ve always been like,” Iamaleava added. “Just going out there and taking one play a time. Really, staying calm under pressure. You don’t look at it as pressure once you get out there. I think it always stuck with me as a kid.”
Though Tennessee’s offense quickly took off upon Heupel’s arrival nearly three years ago, the defense has undergone a slow rebuild.
Issues with depth have often plagued the unit, despite some improvement and it was evident last season, particularly in the second level where injuries led to inconsistency at times.
WATCH ON VOLREPORT: Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks previews fall camp
At linebacker, defensive coordinator Tim Banks enters his third fall camp with optimism as the Vols return their leading tackler from a year ago in Aaron Beasley along with a number of underclassmen that saw the field last season.
“I think, honestly, (Beasley) has always been confident,” Banks said. “I think as the spotlight started to shift towards him a little bit, I thought he got more comfortable in that setting. He’s been great. He’s had a tremendous offseason. From a leadership perspective, I think he feels like he has a voice. People obviously will listen when they see the production that he put up consistently.”
The coaching staff went to the transfer portal for more depth and pulled former BYU linebacker Kennan Pili.
Pili arrived in the spring and has already been with the team for the last six months but is looking to develop as a vocal leader alongside Beasley.
“I kind of felt new (in the spring) and I’m starting to not feel new anymore,” Pili said. “Being able to grow in the system, to grow in the culture…My big thing was, you want to work from the bottom as one of the new guys and get that respect. I wanted to focus on that and be there for the team.”
Whatever Tennessee’s struggles were in pass defense, the Vols’ front four were elite in stopping the run last season.
The unit was among the best in college football and trailed only Georgia in the SEC in run defense.
WATCH ON VOLREPORT: Tennessee football QBs Joe Milton and Nico Iamaleava meet with the media
On the interior, Tennessee returns tackle Omari Thomas and added Omarr Norman-Lott from the transfer portal to bring more experience and depth up front as the group tries to build on its success in taking the run out of the game of opposing offenses.
“I think there was a lot of pride (in stopping the run),” Thomas said. “We take a lot of pride in it. We don’t want people to be able to say, ‘oh, it was easy to get through.’ As a defensive line, we take a lot of pride in that. Of course, everything starts up front in the trenches.
“We just continue to grow and we want to have that same growth this year and take the next step in pass rush game and put them together.”
Off the edge, Tennessee has to replace Byron Young, who is now in the NFL following a strong 2022 season but Roman Harrison is expected to make a big leap in his place and a healthy Tyler Baron could improve the Vols’ pass rush.
“Tyler has always had the talent, a god-given talent,” Banks said. “He’s been one of the better players on our defense up front. He’s long, he’s athletic. I think the biggest thing for him is just kind of one of those things where he’s been banged up a ton. He was fortunate enough to make it all the way through spring.
“I think we saw a lot of great consistency with his play. We were fired up to see it carry over into camp.”
No. 6 Tennessee now has back-to-back wins under its belt after a 74-56 win over No. 23 Georgia Wednesday night in Knoxville.
The Vols trailed the Bulldogs by one point heading into the halftime break but turned up the heat in the final 20 minutes. Tennessee erupted on a 20-4 run to start the second half of play and kept Georgia far away from striking distance through the final buzzer.
Jordan Gainey put up a sneaky 19 points on Wednesday to lead all scorers but Zakai Zeigler wasn’t far behind with 16 points of his own, much of which came in the second half. Special recognition goes to Tennessee guard Jahmai Mashack, who punished a Georgia defense that left him open with 11 points on 5-of-5 shooting from the floor.
After the game, RTI’s Ric Butler and Ryan Schumpert broke down their thoughts on Tennessee’s rivalry win in the RTI: Reaction show from the arena floor.
Check it out below:
RTI: Reaction
The Tennessee Volunteers and defensive coordinator Tim Banks have agreed to a contract extension, sources told ESPN on Wednesday.
Banks led one of the country’s top defenses in 2024. The Vols held 11 of their 13 opponents under 20 points on defense and finished fifth nationally in yards per play allowed (4.56).
Banks received interest from multiple teams and coached this season on a contract that expires at the end of January. His new deal will pay him in the $2 million range annually, sources told ESPN, after he made $1.5 million this season.
A finalist for the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach in college football this season, Banks has been with Josh Heupel all four seasons at Tennessee after coaching under James Franklin at Penn State for five seasons.
Banks, 53, could be without one of his top players for part of next season. Cornerback Jermod McCoy, an ESPN second-team All-American, underwent surgery after tearing an ACL while training at his home in Texas, school officials said.
McCoy will miss spring practice, and his rehabilitation and recovery will determine whether he can get back in time for the start of the 2025 season.
The transfer from Oregon State was a key part of Tennessee’s defense as a sophomore and one of the top returning defensive backs in college football. He tied for the team lead with four interceptions, led the team with nine pass breakups and finished third with 44 total tackles. His 90.3 coverage grade by Pro Football Focus ranked fifth nationally among cornerbacks during the regular season.
Tennessee tied for seventh nationally with 11 touchdown passes allowed in 13 games.
Tennessee legislature: 3 key issues to watch
The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 for a new two-year term.
Tennessee Republicans are poised to pass new rules that would allow House Speaker Cameron Sexton to ban a spectator from the House gallery for the entirety of the legislative session, an escalation of public protest guardrails the GOP supermajority has implemented in the last two years.
The new two-strike rule allows the speaker to order anyone in the gallery removed for disorderly conduct. If a person is removed once, they will be blocked from returning to the gallery for that day and the next legislative day.
Once a person is deemed disorderly and removed a second time, though, they can be prohibited from the gallery “for any period up to the remainder” of the legislative session.
Sexton could also immediately ban someone for “especially egregious conduct.”
Republicans also gave initial passage Tuesday in the House Rules Committee to a new three-strikes provision that would block a disorderly member from the House chamber, as well.
How Sexton, R-Crossville, might define disorderly or “especially egregious” conduct is fully at his discretion, a point House Democrats have repeatedly criticized over what they argued was inequitable application of the rules. Democrats have argued that by holding supermajority the GOP has total power to define what is and is not considered out of order.
The new rules package come amid several sessions of heated public pushback, typically sharply critical of House Republicans, that first began as gun control protests in the wake of the 2023 Covenant School shooting.
Since then, House Republican leadership has implemented increasingly stringent speaking rules for members, instituted certain signage bans for members of the public and blocked off one-half of the public House gallery for ticketed entrance.
Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, was one of the three Democrats on Tuesday’s House committee that voted against the rules package.
“If the representative can’t be heard, if they can’t express themselves, and then the people are being put out, who are you listening to?” Hakeem asked Rep. Johnny Garret, R-Goodlettsville, who presented the GOP rules package.
Garrett, an attorney, likened the House chamber to a courtroom. Public access does not mean there aren’t rules to follow, he argued.
“Courts in the state of Tennessee are wide open, you and I can walk in and observe,” Garrett said. “But we do not have the constitutional right to scream bloody murder inside a courtroom. That judge would slap us with contempt and throw us in jail.”
Under the new three-strikes rule for House members, a representative who is “called to order” for breaking House rules, which the rules package also refers to as “unruly behavior,” will at first face a limit on their speaking time. For the second transgression, the member would be silenced for two legislative days.
A third transgression could trigger total removal from the House chamber for three legislative days.
Garrett said the House would set up a remote voting chamber in a committee room to allow the member to cast votes.
The remote voting rule appears targeted at Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, who frequently clashes with Sexton and other House Republicans on the chamber floor.
Jones demurred Tuesday when asked if he felt the remote voting punishment was aimed at him but described the rules package overall as “authoritarianism without guardrails.”
“It’s going to impact the right of the public to be here in this building, going to impact their rights and their ability to show up in the capital,” Jones said.
In other rule changes, House members’ bill allowance will drop over the next two years. Members previously could file 15 bills each but would be held to 12 bills in 2025. Next year, the bill allowance would drop to 10 per member. Committee chairs and other leadership would have a higher allowance.
Republicans voted down all rules changes proposed by Democrats, including one brought by Jones to curtail conflicts of interest between lawmakers married to lobbyists.
Republicans also blocked a ban on guns in committee rooms. Firearms are currently banned from the state Capitol but allowed in the adjoining office building.
The new rules package must be adopted by the full House before any changes go into effect, but Republicans easily have the votes to pass the package.
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