With each passing year, more and more college football coaches express the desire to make their players uncomfortable as soon as they arrive on campus.
Tee Martin, who is in his second season as Tennessee’s receivers coach, certainly has a method once his new players enter the practice field.
“I put them in the hardest situation first, and that’s playing inside,” Martin said this week on a Zoom call. “Playing inside is the hardest receiver position that you can play, because there is so much action there. You see people crossing your face on blitzes. You will see linebackers, safeties, nickelbacks – there are a lot of things that happen inside – so I placed all of them inside when they first got here, so that adjustment to move outside becomes clearer.
“It’s a bigger field out there. There is more grass, and you can see and anticipate coverages and disguises and things of that nature.”
Given the haul of new receivers Tennessee has added in 2020 and the amount of practices missed this spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, discomfort has been the norm so far in preseason camp, yet so has improvement.