When veteran starter Jay Gibson went down with an injury in the season opener, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga tight ends coach Zeb Speir knew he would need someone to step in and take over the majority of the playing time at the position.
It was a necessity in the absence of the 6-foot-5, 255-pound Gibson — a McCallie graduate from nearby Cleveland who is in his seventh college season — and it was a big job.
Speir had one message for UTC’s remaining tight ends, a group that was down to three healthy freshmen and a sophomore after junior Nathaniel Eberly-Rodriguez also got hurt in that Aug. 31 opener at Tennessee: Be consistent.
That already basically described freshman John McIntyre since the former Athens (Alabama) High School standout joined the Mocs over the summer, and nothing has changed for the 6-4, 230-pounder after he moved into Gibson’s role — except that his statistical contributions have increased each game. After recording no receiving statistics against the Volunteers, he had a 6-yard catch a week later at Georgia State, two catches for 39 yards against Mercer on Sept. 14, and four catches for 50 yards last week as the Mocs returned from their open date and ended an 0-3 skid to start the season with a breakout performance by the offense in a 45-30 win against Portland State.
McIntyre has really shown talent as a runner in the open field, with 84 of his 95 yards coming after the catch.
“He has no idea how good and how big he’s going to be,” UTC head coach Rusty Wright said this week, adding that Speir “has done a really good job of getting him to this point and getting him to that. You don’t really hear a whole lot out of him, he just shows up and goes to work. He’s got to continue to get better for us in the run game (as a blocker), but there’s no doubt he’s talented with the ball in his hands.
“Happy for him, happy for us that we didn’t miss (on McIntyre as a prospect). He’s going to play a lot of football here; the sky’s the limit for him.”
Producing yards after the catch is nothing new for McIntyre, who in his senior season at Athens totaled a combined 1,170 yards rushing and receiving while also scoring 19 touchdowns. But if the ball never touches his hands again this season, he’s fine with that — provided it’s the best thing for the Mocs, who were picked in the preseason as the favorites to win the Southern Conference championship but must overcome an 0-1 start to league play after the 10-3 loss to Mercer last month.
“I just want win the championship,” McIntyre said. “Nothing for me, because it’s a team sport, it’s not really what I do. When my number is called, I’ve got to do my job on the play.”
It helps that McIntyre has been getting mentored by a couple of guys who have played for Wright.
One of those is obviously Gibson — who practiced this week and could play when the Mocs return to SoCon competition with Saturday’s 3:30 p.m. game against East Tennessee State University (3-2, 1-0) in Johnson City. The other is UTC assistant director of athletics performance Chris James, who was an All-SoCon tight end for the Mocs in 2019 and had 47 catches and eight touchdowns in his career.
“Chris, he works me out of the weight room, so me and him have gotten pretty close, and he’s just cracking jokes at me all the time,” McIntyre said. “He says he could beat me in a race, and he said he’s got better hands than me too.”
Speir said Gibson has been an extension of the coaching staff during his injury, which was something that Wright had already demanded of the graduate student entering the season.
“Jay’s been huge. He’s my security blanket now,” Speir said. “He’s played a lot of ball, and that’s the beauty of where Jay’s at now is he’s seen every look blocking-wise, he’s seen all different coverages in route running. He’s seen the pass protection adjustments to blitz or whatever the front is and all that stuff, so for him, the game’s really slow. I wish I could have him for a couple more years in the tight end room just for what he is on the field and what he is off the field to our tight end group and to our offense, to our team.
“That’s something Coach Wright challenged him with this fall, that he’s one of the best FCS tight ends in the country, and to go play like it and then get those other guys ready to go. He’s taken that and ran with it.”
McIntyre noted that along with James and Gibson, his development has been helped by Eberly-Rodriguez and redshirt freshman Dalton Restelli, a Baylor alum.
The Mocs’ challenging schedule doesn’t get any easier with seven straight Saturdays of SoCon games ahead, starting with this weekend’s trip to ETSU, which is ranked 23rd in the Stats Perform FCS Top 25.
However, they remain a confident group that believes only a couple of plays in the narrow losses to Football Bowl Subdivision member Georgia State and league foe Mercer separate UTC from being 3-1 instead of 1-3.
“I think we just shot ourselves in the foot in the first couple of games, obviously not the Tennessee game, but the Georgia State game we shot ourselves in the foot,” McIntyre said. “Mercer, I thought we did, and then coming off that bye, we had good practices, and against Portland State, we played good. We’re just shooting ourselves in the foot, and I think we’ve just got to continue to get better.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.