University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley speaks to the press during an event.KNOXVILLE - After watching film from Tuesday's scrimmage, Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley remains pleased with his team's intangibles despite some struggles with offensive operation.
"I was pleased with the intangibles, and I have been all camp, of this football team," Dooley said after the Volunteers' first practice of two practices today. "How we compete. We get good effort, our toughness has been pretty good, good attitude and demeanor. For the most part, we're really working hard and we've got a good team chemistry going, but that alone doesn't win you football games.Where we've really got to make a big jump is our execution, all the details of everything."
Dooley was not pleased Tuesday night with quarterback Tyler Bray's consistency and management of the offense, but he said the offense came back and practiced well on Thursday morning.
"Probably the biggest disappointment in the scrimmage was our operation on offense," he said. "We talked to Tyler a lot about we were just too slow. We put a lot on him on alerts and kills and checks. We're going to do some things, we've got to tighten it down as a coach and do a better job of coaching so Tyler can get in there and groove it a little bit.
"I feel like we're working hard and doing good and we don't have a lot of emotion and drama that's impeding our progress. But that doesn't mean we're a good team. It just means we're coaching the right stuff, we're coaching the techniques, the discipline of doing things the right way and doing it over and over and over and over again with a lot of consistency."
The Vols will eat two meals and have two meetings between today's two practices.
Notre Dame transfer Alex Bullard is getting reps at first-team left guard ahead of freshman early enrollee Marcus Jackson and third-year sophomore JerQuari Schofield. Bullard is learning all three offensive line spots (center, guard and tackle) and played some of all five in the spring. Dooley said the Vols like James Stone at center.
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