Tennessee has taken part in seven spring practices under first-year head coach Josh Heupel.
The Vols return to practice on Saturday. Saturday’s practice will be open to the public at Neyland Stadium.
Admission to practice is free and will begin at 10 a.m. EDT.
Ahead of Saturday’s open practice, former Oklahoma equipment manager Ben Smith previewed what fans can expect tempo-wise from Heupel’s offense on the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days.”
He served as an equipment manager with the Sooners when Heupel was co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach between 2010-14, working directly under the newly-hired Tennessee head coach.
Smith mentioned practices “moved quickly” and that Heupel is efficient in making sure all players are receiving reps.
“I had a bag of balls then I upgraded to a cart,” Smith said. “I had at least 20 balls ready to go. Most of the time in practices, I would grab a couple of other equipment managers and we all would be snapping to different quarterbacks at the same time, so that all of the wide receivers would catch a ball no matter what. If one of the quarterbacks was throwing it to the outside receiver, the second quarterback was throwing it to the inside receiver, just making sure that every wide receiver caught a ball at some point on that play.
“Not only were we snapping five different balls at the same time, but we were moving quickly, getting the next set of wide receivers ready to go. Everyone got a rep no matter what.”
During practices, Heupel will have his player-personnel locate an equipment manager after a play is dead. This allows for the ball to be quickly placed in the official’s hands so it can be spotted for the next play.
“He definitely did that at Oklahoma,” Smith said. “I ran balls on game days, as well as spotting the ball in our practices. We all wore official uniforms so that wide receivers would see us and throw us the ball, and to quickly set up for the next play.
“He loves to speed everything up and makes sure the ball gets put into the official’s hands, and so the wide receivers or the running backs can quickly look back and figure out what play they are running next, so they can kind of catch the defense off-guard.”
The entire show with Smith can be listened to here or below.
[vertical-gallery id=35203]