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Tennessee football practices for final time before first fall scrimmage

On3 imageby: Austin Price08/08/24AustinPriceless
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For the final time before the first scrimmage of fall camp, Tennessee football took to the practice field on Thursday morning. Setting the pace is a defensive line group that Rodney Garner is pretty proud of seven practices in.

“I think they’re really working at moving the needle in the right direction with less resistance,” Garner said. “Everybody always wants to say, ‘you coach them hard,’ or ‘you’re hard on them,’ well this is a hard game. Life is hard. So, what you’re trying to do is prepare them for those difficult times. You know they try to say, ‘well you’re a dinosaur, you played in a dinosaur age,’ but when I played coach’s philosophy was he wanted practice to be the hardest thing we’d be at (and) he wanted the game to be easy. That’s the same kind of philosophy that I want to relate to these guys. I want them to really work their butts off. Prepare to be champions and then on Saturday be able to go out there and reap the rewards of their labor. That’s what we’re trying to stress to them. That’s what we’re working towards, and like I said, we still got so much room for improvement.”

With a little bit of praise also comes with a kick in the butt as the veteran line coach is always pushing his players for more.

“That we need a lot more work,” Garner said. “That we’ve got to really improve. That we’ve got to get in much better shape, football playing shape. Like I told them today after we finished running, if we are in great shape, we will be more mentally tough, we will be more physically tough. That’s got to be our challenge. We got to put ourselves in a position where we’re not beating ourselves. We’ve got to go out there and be able to challenge our opponents to beat us, and we can’t beat ourselves, whether it be mentally or physically. That’s got to start in the classroom, obviously, our football IQ improving there, but also getting ourselves in the best physical shape that we can possibly be in. That we can go out there and play four quarters of championship football. That we can play the fourth quarter just like we started the first quarter and be able to finish in the games that really count.”

Tennessee scrimmages on Friday night at Neyland

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