KNOXVILLE — Tennessee is in its second week of fall training camp ahead of the 2020 season.
Jim Chaney enters his second season as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator. 2020 will be redshirt senior Jarrett Guarantano’s first campaign in his UT career in having the same offensive coordinator in back-to-back seasons.
Following six practices in fall training camp, Chaney mentioned that “without any question” Guarantano has a better understanding of the offense this year.
“That’s exactly the goal of every quarterback, is to get them to execute the offense the way we want to,” Chaney said on a Zoom call with reporters Thursday. “There’s so much subjectivity that comes into the evaluation of quarterbacks; he did this, he did that, he shouldn’t have done that. We try to eliminate that and get rid of the subjectivity and we quantify as much as we possibly can on the practice field. Every ball that comes out of their hand, it’s either on target or not, the decision is either good or not, and that’s what goes into these things.
“We have a category that sometimes is not good, that when we do something really stupid with the ball, that puts our team at risk. So far to date you can see that he’s demonstrating the importance of the ball and also understanding within our concepts, those numbers continue to rise and it’s our objective way to be able to see growth and development, and I feel real comfortable that he’s doing that right now. Are we where we need to be? No, not at all, but we got to continue to work to get better. So yes, I feel very comfortable that we should see some growth and development out of that position.”
Part of the position are backups with game experience in sophomore Brian Maurer and redshirt sophomore J.T. Shrout. The unit also consists of early enrollee freshman Harrison Bailey.
“Right now, everybody is playing football, equal reps across the board with J.T., Brian, also with Harrison,” Chaney said of the Vols’ quarterback unit behind Guarantano. “We’re giving everybody as many reps as we can. Everything is up in the air. We’re way too early to make decisions on that and coach is trying to keep us in the most competitive environments we can.
“They got to be put under the fire, we got to see how they’re going to react when things happen like that to feel comfortable with them playing. They’ll earn that two spot and that three spot and that fourth spot. Unfortunately, that’s life, somebody is going to get a little better than the other one and we’ll sort that out as the thing goes on. I feel like that’s where we’re at right now, so nothing’s cut and dry one bit. There’s competition throughout the team, but particularly at that spot.”