Mike Ekeler details Vols’ special teams following third fall camp practice

“I’ll tell you, in the spring, our guys worked their tails off and all you do in spring practice is build your players’ portfolio, so each player you figure out what they can and can’t do. Then you reaffirm that right now in our drills that we are doing on special teams, so we have a really good idea what our guys’ skill sets are and where to plug them in. We’ve got a lot of dudes, man, a lot of RLDs, real live dudes, that are flying around and we should wreck shop.”

“To them, to their skill set, to help them get to the next level, what we do is, we take every rep that they do in practice and put them in a folder. Let’s say you’ve got a starter and he plays on one (special team) and the scouts come in and say ‘can he play on kickoff, can he be on punt?’ Well I’ll pull up the tape and say ‘right here.’ Then, it’s a puzzle, it’s putting guys in the right places. Leaving tread on the tires of all the starters and developing young players, giving them a role. They might get 30 reps in the game, shoot, that’s like being a starter on offense or defense, so there’s a formula to it and it’s ever-changing too.”

“You don’t really have to be a make-you-miss type guy, but you got to be a guy who can run through the doggone smoke. You remember Days of Thunder when he dropped the hammer and went through the smoke? That’s the video I showed them. That’s what kickoff return is like. I mean you got bodies everywhere, man, and if you’re scared, you better call 911. You’ve got to run through the smoke. Punt return, now you look for a fart in a skillet. A guy who can make you miss, one cut, get vertical, that elusive guy. It’s a little bit different, and punt return, you know, it’s not like kickoff, you’ve got everybody coming down, full boar, you’ve got windows and you’ve got space and you have levels so you can be more of a guy who’s going to make more cuts inside and out.”