What Tennessee cornerbacks coach Derek Jones said on his group in spring practice

Tennessee cornerbacks coach Derek Jones met with members of the media on Tuesday following the 12^th spring practice to discuss his group’s progress in the new defense.

The following is video and a written transcript of the Derek Jones press conference from Tuesday afternoon.

On a fresh start with a new staff helping young players…

“I think any time that you take over a group, everyone sees it as a fresh start. And so I think any time guys get a fresh start, they look at it as a standpoint to be able to right all the wrongs, to be able to do things, and to be able, more than anything, to get on a level playing field as far as competition is concerned. And when you talk about guys like Tre Poteat, you come in your first year, you play, you’re not gonna be as good as you’re gonna eventually get to, and there’s a huge learning curve in that first year. So I think for all of those young guys that were here last year, it was kinda that, a reset, a restart. Listening, but able to reflect back on what happened to them last year, knowing that they need to improve in that area, and depending upon you to help them get there.”

On the skillsets he wants to see from corners…

“Really it has a lot to do with the scheme that you’re playing and what you’re trying to accomplish. You know, if you are a primary man team, you’ve gotta have guys that can do that. That’s more speed, that’s more agility. A lot of times, they can be a little bit smaller. But when you’re playing more of zone schemes, the bigger bodies. It really depends upon the type of receivers that you’re gonna do. I think what you probably need to do is stack your room equivalent to what you’re gonna face. Now, with us having a defense that includes nickels, we’re gonna have to have some of those smaller guys that can cover on the inside, on the slots. And you know, we’ve got several big-bodied guys that are in the room. I think for what we’re doing schematically, ironically, the room here at Tennessee fits what Jim Knowles likes to do.”

On his initial impression of Ty Redmond…

“Well, I got 27 years of experience of doing it, and Ty is a very humble kid. He’s a guy that had a lot of success, but he doesn’t look at the season that he had last year with any air of arrogance whatsoever. He’s eager to learn, he’s hungry to get better, and he wants the knowledge and wisdom that I’ve been able to share with him over the course of my career. He’s a very smart football player. He’s a guy that naturally been a little bit bigger. You’ve gotta iron some things out from a fundamental technique standpoint.

“You’re talking about when a guy comes in as a true freshman, he doesn’t get a lot of that training. It takes corners a while to get as good as they’re gonna become, and I think he’s relishing the fact of me harping on the details. I’m kinda old school in how I go about things the drills that we’re doing are showing up in practice, and I think he and the rest of the room’s embracing that.”

On if a position room needs a vocal leader…

“I don’t really have a guy in the room. And what you have to do as a coach and what you have to do as a leader is you have to almost force them to step out of their comfort zone in that regard, and that’s what we’ve been working on. I’m a guy that believes that a lot of the growth at any position comes in the meeting room, and we’ve had a lot of time to spend in the meeting room. And we do a lot of exercises in our meeting room that not a lot of other people in college football do. And that’s being comfortable with one another, that’s being honest with one another, that’s pointing out the strength and weaknesses of each other.

“I have them tell one another how they can get better, because the only way that you’re gonna be as good as you can be is to unify. And in order to be unified, you gotta care about each other. In order to care about each other, you gotta know each other. My first week here, my very first meeting, those kids in the room didn’t even have each other phone numbers, so we had a long way to go in that regard. So it’s hard to be a vocal leader if you don’t even know the guys that you’re talking to, but every meeting that we’ve had, step by step, we’ve worked toward that, and I think all of them are talking enough now.

“You know, some guys are going to lead by example, and if they’re not vocal guys, you teach them that’s what they have to do.
So everything that they do has to be something that everybody else is looking at and saying, ‘That’s the way that you do it.’ But Ty is a little bit quiet, but he does do a really good job of picking the young guys up, and he is embracing that role.”

On the incoming transfers…

“I didn’t know much about any of them at all. It was kinda day one, page one, just in the walkthroughs observing them. And once we were able to start practice, you could see a lot of the traits. What you have to do in our position is go back and look at film on guys and kinda get an idea of what to expect. But you don’t want to develop an opinion as a coach on a guy before you actually coach him, because what you see on tape generally is a highlight film or you don’t know the situation or you don’t know if a guy’s playing unmotivated because there’s just so many uncontrollable factors.

“Guys transfer for a reason, and a lot of times when guys are unhappy, a lot of times when guys think that their coaches are gonna get fired, they’re not playing the way that they’re gonna play. But again, it’s like the first question that you asked. I think all of those guys in that room saw a clean slate. So I’ve been very, very pleased with where we are because my mission coming in here was not to develop one or two players, it was to develop a unit. Because what I found out in my career, you gotta have multiple guys in your room that can play if you expect to win championships, because in order to win a championship at the college level, you gotta play a lot of games, gotta play a lot of snaps.

“So if I’ve only got two guys in my room that can help us win ball games, at some point they’re gonna taper off. So you’ve gotta have other guys that throughout the course of the season can get quality reps so that everybody gets to the finish line. And I think collectively, we got five guys in that room, the three guys that were here last year, the two guys that transferred, are in a really, really good competition right now to see who’s gonna rise to the top, but more than anything, trying to get five guys that no matter who we play, we give ourselves a chance to win.”

On Auburn transfer Kayin Lee…

“Kayin has played a lot of snaps in this league. Had some individual success, but hadn’t had a lot of team success. And those things affect a lot of guys. I think he’s one of those guys that really wanted a fresh start, really wanted an opportunity to prove himself, and he works at it. You can tell by watching him in practice, in the meeting room, that he’s got a level of maturity to him. What we’re doing is a little bit different, so a lot of times you don’t feel as free, so he’s learning.

“But he’s been really impressive as far as helping to bring the young guys along. And the one thing I will say about him, probably, that stands out more than anything, he’s an excellent teammate, and that’s what you want when you bring a guy into your room, into your program, into your locker room. A lot of times you don’t know these guys, and you only have a small amount of time to recruit them in the portal, so it’s a lot of times a roll of the dice in who you’re bringing in. And what you wanna see when you got a guy that’s been at another program, especially a program that’s played against you and competed against you, you wanna make sure that guy’s the right type of person. And I think that’s the one thing that I can look at him and say, ‘You know, that kid’s a captain, that kid’s a leader, that kid is good for my room, and that kid’s good for our program.'”

On making the right play for the team…

“Cornerback’s one of those positions where you’ve really gotta have a level of confidence that nobody else can relate to. Not many people who are criticizing you are gonna understand how hard it is to do what you do. Not many people who are criticizing you have ever done what you’re doing. And what happens with you is seen by everybody, and it’s gonna be criticized, scrutinized, talked about by everybody, and you just gotta know that. So part of my job as their coach is to coach them on those aspects of things, as well.

“The mental toughness piece and the confidence piece is just as important as any other basic fundamental, and that’s what I was relating to when I talked about the different exercises that we have. Because what they also have to understand is you can’t harp on anything that happened in the past. Whether it was a series ago, whether it was a play ago, or whether it was in a previous quarter, you gotta be able to move on, and a lot of people can’t do that. People will still be talking about it, but you’ve gotta go. And on the flip side of it, the offense is trained that when they see you, where you’re frustrated or you’re worried, or if you’re complaining, or if you’re trying to explain yourself, they’re gonna come back at you.

“So you just gotta have those guys prepared for that at all times. And whether you make a good play or whether you make a bad play, you gotta move on to the next play. And it can’t be something that’s discussed, it can’t be something that’s talked about. You gotta improve it, and you gotta keep moving on. And that’s just the mindset and the mentality that every single young man in that room has to have. And those things have to be practiced, because I’d be lying to you if I told you that’s natural for everybody that plays the position. But a big part of my job and a big part of the guys in the room that have played is to make sure that everybody in that room understands you can’t worry about how you look in the eyes of other people when you play cornerback. You just gotta be able to make the next play for your team.”

On working under Jim Knowles again…

“It’s like riding a bike. Football is football. And when you coach football for as long as I have and when you’ve played football, it may be called something different, it may be termed something different, but it’s still cover three. It’s still man. It’s still quarters. It’s still quarter quarter half. That part of it’s not gonna change. And Coach Knowles and I were together for so long, it was really easy for me to go back in the room and pick up kind of where things left off. Being able to finish his sentences, like all the sayings and the things that he’d do in a meeting, those things were developed when he and I were together at Duke.

“And at the end of the day, I think if you look at it, I’ve probably been with him longer than anybody else in that room when you look at the combined amount of years. And he’s changed a lot of things because we all have to evolve, and I think the thing he and I both have learned is I have changed some things. When Coach Knowles and I were together at Duke, our recruiting pool was very, very small, and the amount of guys we were able to get was very small, especially when it came to D-line and some of those other bodies that are very hard to get. So we had to evolve our defense to how we could recruit, and we felt like we could recruit better DBs and smaller guys than we could the good people.

“So our defense evolved towards being able to play a lot of man coverage, just trying to force quarterbacks to be really good because we didn’t have the pass rush. That’s how we became good. We had a lot of guys that benefited from that. And when he went to Oklahoma State, he had a little bit different talent level than he had, so he evolved a little bit. A lot of the three high safety started to get popular. He adopted that. And naturally, when he went to Ohio State, he had really good players at every position. And so he was able to kind of do a lot of the things that he wanted to do and not have to play so much man coverage, because when you do that, there’s a lot of high risk in doing that. So when you have all the pieces that fit together, you can be more schematic and I think that’s exactly what you’re seeing here.”