Tennessee football coach Josh Heupel was pleased with Wednesday morning’s first practice of the preseason, citing “a ton of energy” from his Volunteers.
That assessment may seem rather expected, but Heupel admits there can be rough starts to August camp and that he has experienced such days.
“Have I ever seen a bad one? Yeah,” Heupel said in a news conference. “If you don’t do a good job of being intentional and are not building them the right way and you end up having a guy who gets nicked up — that’s something you’ve got to be really intentional with at the beginning of training camp.
“When you think of the ability of your players to communicate at a really high level and some of the things you’ve been intentional with all spring and all summer, if those things don’t show up, that can be a telltale sign the culture and what you’re trying to build isn’t going in the right direction.”
The Vols went through fundamental work with some team work as well, according to Heupel, who was impressed with the way players reset following spring practice and summer conditioning.