The Tennessee Volunteers held their 11th preseason football practice Friday and will scrimmage for the second time Sunday.
It’s now within three weeks before the Vols kick off Josh Heupel’s second season Sept. 1 against Ball State, but Willie Martinez is still very much in camp mode. The second-year secondary coach worked this spring without four key players – Warren Burrell, Kamal Hadden, De’Shawn Rucker and Brandon Turnage – due to injuries, so getting that quartet reacclimated has been an objective.
Tennessee also made its biggest offseason transfer portal splash in the defensive backfield, landing Andre Turrentine from Ohio State and Wesley Walker from Georgia Tech, so forgive Martinez for wanting to take as much time as he’s allotted.
“We want to find out a lot about guys we don’t know about,” Martinez said Friday during a news conference. “We know about some guys who weren’t with us in the spring who played last year, and we’ve really just been rotating. There are not ones or twos or threes.
“We’re just trying to get them competitive reps in practice to where we can get matchups and evaluations on each player. It’s been good, because we’ve been able to play more guys and get a lot more reps.”