TAMPA, Fla. - Within an hour of completing a 45-6 rout of Northwestern in Friday's Outback Bowl, Tennessee picked up a pair of verbal commitments for its 2016 recruiting class.
That's life in the Southeastern Conference, where the job is never done and there's hardly time to catch your breath.
The Volunteers returned to Knoxville on Saturday with another bowl trophy on board. Many players will head home for a few days before the start of the spring semester. The coaching staff will begin the offseason self-scout and prep for the final month of recruiting, which begins when the dead period ends Jan. 13.
"We need to continue to develop depth," Tennessee coach Butch Jones said after the win. "We need to continue to close this recruiting season out with a class that really helps us in that depth. Not so much in the rankings, but in a recruiting class that adds another brick, another layer to our foundation of who we want to become and what we need.
"We need to continue to elevate everything from A to Z, and I'm in the process of reviewing that and will continue to review that."
Tennessee's 2016 recruiting class added two three-star prospects Friday afternoon: offensive lineman Nathan Niehaus, a former West Virginia pledge, and Georgia defensive back Baylen Buchanan, giving the Vols 17 players expected to sign in February.
Four players - three junior college signees (wide receiver Jeff George, cornerback D.J. Henderson and defensive tackle Alexis Johnson) and freshman cornerback Marquill Osborne - are slated to enroll this month.
Tennessee's Derek Barnett (9) wraps up Vanderbilt's Ralph Webb (7). The Vanderbilt Commodores visited the Tennessee Volunteers in SEC football action November 28, 2015.The Vols' recruiting class is ranked 20th by Rivals, which is a drop from the past two classes Tennessee signed. But there are still some big-name targets on Tennessee's board, most notably wide receiver Mecole Hardman, safety Nigel Warrior, offensive lineman Landon Dickerson and defensive tackle Derrick Brown.
As coaches hit the road and official visitors come to Knoxville on upcoming January weekends, Tennessee can sell momentum and progress after finishing a 9-4 season with an emphatic win.
"It's what we do with it now," Jones said. "We have to learn from the experiences of a very long football season that we've been through. We need to apply it to (next year's) team now."
Jones said one of the final phases of building a program is dealing with success, and the Vols should be hungry to reach for more in 2016 after coming close to even better results this season.
"It was a good season," defensive end Derek Barnett said, "but not up to our expectations."
Moving with Mark
Some of Tennessee's support staffers are following outgoing special teams coordinator/tight ends coach Mark Elder to Eastern Kentucky and will be full-time assistant coaches on his first staff there.
Third-year staffers Chase Gibson and Greg Meyer are joining Elder. Gibson was a graduate assistant with Jones at Cincinnati, and he was a defensive quality control coach for the Vols this season. Meyer was Tennessee's special teams quality control coach, and he will coordinate special teams and coach running backs on Elder's staff.
Offensive quality control coach Tommy Zagorski, who helped Don Mahoney with the offensive line this season, also is heading to Eastern Kentucky after one season with Tennessee.
The Vols had nine quality control coaches or graduate assistants this season.
Tennessee tidbits
The five rushing touchdowns the Vols scored against Northwestern were a bowl record for the program. Tennessee had four rushing touchdowns against Virginia Tech in the 1994 Gator Bowl and against Iowa in last year's TaxSlayer Bowl. Tennessee's 45 points matched three other performances for the second-highest total by the Vols in a bowl game. The record is 48 points, set against Northwestern in the 1997 Citrus Bowl. Tennessee scored 45 points against Iowa last year. Von Pearson, who caught two passes for 32 yards Friday, finished the season as Tennessee's leading receiver with 38 receptions for 409 yards, just edging Josh Malone (31 for 405). That's the fourth-lowest total for a Tennessee leader in receiving yards since 1987, and the 38 catches are the lowest for a team leader since 2008, when Gerald Jones caught just 30 passes.
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.