KNOXVILLE -- While many of the Tennessee football players went back to their hometowns or to warmer locales for spring break this month, the offensive braintrust took a little trip of its own.
It was much more of a business trip than anything else.
New offensive coordinator Mike DeBord, receivers coach and new passing game coordinator Zach Azzanni and graduate assistant Nick Sheridan joined third-year Volunteers head coach Butch Jones in heading south to Florida, where they watched ESPN analyst Jon Gruden film his "QB Camp" show and picked the brain of the former Super Bowl-winning coach.
"There's no vacations around here," DeBord said with a laugh Thursday evening after Tennessee's practice. "It really was a great experience. Jon Gruden, in my opinion, is one of the best football coaches there is. We sat in on the interview, and when you watch him teach, I've picked up things just watching him teach.
"He'll be talking like this and jump out at you to get your attention. They went four hours without a break. That's teaching. Then also, too, some of the things he talked about with the quarterback, Butch and I are talking to our quarterbacks about being the CEO of the offense and being the guy in charge of the culture of the drill, things like that.
"It's always a great learning experience. I think when you get around any coach -- I was talking to a high school coach last night, and he gave me some great thoughts about certain things. Any time you get around coaches, I think you can always learn things."
That's certainly the case for younger coaches such as Azzanni and Sheridan, who spent the first two seasons of his Michigan career playing for DeBord.
Before he joined Jones's staff at Tennessee, the 38-year-old Azzanni coached receivers at Central Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin and held some coordinator duties at Western Kentucky.
He admittedly has aspirations, as many coaches do, of running his own program eventually, so he wants to make the most of chances like the one he got nearly two weeks ago.
"I can't write fast enough," Azzanni said. "I love meeting those guys, and the more knowledge the better. I enjoy it. I love it. We don't get to do that a lot. It's so much recruiting. We go down there and just do some ball for a day and not have to go call Johnny and tweet and all that stuff. You can put your phone away and just do football for a little while.
"We don't get to do that often, so that's neat. I get to go be with Coach Gruden, Coach DeBord and Coach Jones. I want to be a head coach some day, and to be around three guys who are head coaches, that's pretty neat."
Tennessee's coaches were able to watch Gruden, who was on campus last summer and helped the Vols conduct their camp for quarterbacks, as he grilled former Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and potential No. 1 overall NFL draft pick, for his annual series with draft-hopeful quarterbacks.
"To see a guy talk football for four straight hours with a young man," Azzanni said, "and not take a break -- not one break, not to eat, not for the bathroom -- four straight hours of sitting there, grilling him and watching film was pretty neat.
"You're seeing 21 minutes of it on ESPN. There's four hours of it. He makes that tape, and the attention to detail on that tape is amazing to me. It was neat, man. It was awesome."
The offseason allows coaches to perform extensive quality control reviews of their programs from the previous season and provides for opportunities for members of the fraternity to compare notes.
For a veteran such as DeBord, the list of coaches he can call for tips and pointers can be pretty long.
"We talk to coaches a lot, and every coach has great resources," he said.
"We put a pass in Tuesday. I didn't like where we were with the quarterback decision-making. Through one of my resources, I'm able to pick up the phone and call a coordinator in the NFL and say, 'Hey, what's your progression for your quarterback with that?' because I didn't feel really good with ours.
"We were about right on with it almost, except for one thing, and that was the problem we were having. He said, 'Here's what we're doing.' I said great. Every coach has resources they can go to, and I think that's what's so important as a coach. You've got to have people you can go and talk about ball with all the time that will help you.
"There's so many different ways of playing football, so it's great having people like that."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.