Tennessee running back Jalen Hurd runs a drill during the first day of fall football practice, Monday, Aug. 1, 2016, in Knoxville, Tenn. (Wade Payne/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP)KNOXVILLE - A smile flashed across Jalen Hurd's face, as if he expected to hear the question presented to him.
Who does Tennessee's star running back think is the best in the Southeastern Conference at his position?
"We'll find out after this year," Hurd said confidently.
LSU's Leonard Fournette and Georgia's Nick Chubb were tabbed as the first-team all-conference running backs at SEC media days last month.
Elsewhere there are Stanford all-star Christian McCaffrey, Florida State's Dalvin Cook, Oklahoma's Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon, Clemson's Wayne Gallman, Oregon's Royce Freeman and many others.
There's another future NFL running back in Tennessee's own backfield: Alvin Kamara.
Hurd is paying attention. He knows what those other running backs are doing on Saturdays. Tennessee's running backs watch highlights of the SEC's top backs to look for pointers and, possibly in Hurd's case, gauge how they stack up.
"It pushes me," he said. "When you see them doing well, you want to do just as well as them or better, for sure. Seeing all these other running backs work, them seeing me work, Alvin pushing me every day - the competition's great."
Establishing himself among college football's best and positioning himself for the next level - Hurd likely will jump to the NFL after this season - are just two of the carrots dangling in front of him going into his junior season.
The 6-foot-4, 240-pound bruiser officially is 892 yards away from becoming Tennessee's all-time leading rusher. The magic number to catch current record holder Travis Henry actually is 1,130. The program's record book doesn't include Henry's bowl stats, which weren't counted toward a player's career statistics until 2002.
"Now that it's reachable and you can see it, I definitely want to do that," Hurd said. "That's a goal of mine. Obviously the biggest goal for me is to help get my team a national championship."
With those two objectives in mind, Hurd headed this summer to California and worked with Robert Paulele, a former UNLV running back who's become a prominent trainer on the West Coast.
Hurd and the other Vols who traveled to train this summer did so with the blessing of their head coach, Butch Jones.
"I welcome that," Jones said. "This is a very driven group, and if they have an opportunity over break, they just have to understand their body. As long as it doesn't affect them in terms of rest and recovery, I'm good with that. I always say I'd rather (have to) say 'Whoa' than 'Sic 'em.'
"We have a group, at times, where we have to say, 'Whoa,' which is a great thing as a coach."
Already a powerful runner, a fierce pass-blocker and an excellent receiver, Hurd thinks the missing ingredient to his game is the ability to elude defenders and outrun them in open space. He focused on improving his explosiveness and top speed, and Paulele put him through a training regimen aimed at improving Hurd's core, balance and flexibility with exercises using resistance bands and his own body weight.
Videos on Hurd's social media accounts show him jumping on fast-moving treadmills, including one rolling at 23 mph.
"I had to look the other way and pretend I didn't see it, and then he got a lecture from me, with a phone call, of being smart and taking care of himself," Jones said. "Jalen's extremely competitive. If you challenge him, he's going to answer the challenge."
Neither Hurd nor Kamara will be challenged much this month, but the prized running backs won't get the entire preseason off from contact.
"I know that come game day Jalen Hurd will be ready," Jones said. "He's proven it over time. What we have to do is make sure we get him his touches in practice and that it's very calculated when he takes hits, but a back like that needs to take hits at times because he's got to be game-ready.
"A back's going to get hit. He's going to get tackled, but we have to do a great job of managing that. I know this: He'll be ready to go when it's game time. We have to manage (his contact), and we have a plan in place for that."
Hurd believes the plan he executed this offseason will work, though the true payoff won't come until the season starts.
"I can definitely tell a difference in my speed," he said. "I feel like I've gotten faster. I feel like my burst is faster. You see it during camp and you see it during the spring, but you don't really feel it and get into that true moment until the game, and that's what I'm ready to show."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.