JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Volunteers have been in Jacksonville since Sunday and during that time they got a very special visit.
While preparing to play an Iowa team with the 2014 Outland Trophy winner in offensive tackle Brandon Scherff, the Tennessee football team heard from its 2000 Outland Trophy winner, former Vols All-American and Jacksonville Jaguars All-Pro John Henderson.
He spoke with the team before Monday's practice at the University of North Florida.
Henderson, a 6-foot-8, 335-pound Nashville native nicknamed "Big John," finished his NFL career with 489 tackles, 29 tackles for loss and eight forced fumbles after collecting 165 tackles, 20.5 sacks, seven passes defended, four forced fumbles and five fumble recoveries at Tennessee.
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"You could see the excitement," said Vols Head Coach Butch Jones told Nashville television station WSMV. "You could see the passion. You could see the energy, and we led off with a YouTube video of him and a trainer that's become very widespread. He was laughing about that, but you could see the passion."
Freshman defensive lineman Derek Barnett added, "It was cool. We saw the video of a trainer slapping him and getting him hyped for games, and he was getting hyped in the meeting talking about this game and our practice today. He's going to be out here, and he's a legend."
The current Tennessee Volunteers, who want to be legends, know that begins with discipline. With this 15 extra days, Jones has taken the Vols back to the basics, and that means fundamentals, especially the special teams.
He believes the little things are what make you a champion.
"Coming down here now is fine tuning and becoming a better football team. It's all execution," Jones said. "If you look, we did a theme of kind of the bowl season so far. It's been marred with missed tackles, big plays, explosive plays. Special Teams are at a premium. It gets back to the overall discipline of what it takes to play winning football with our eye discipline. Again, it's execution. It's going to be a physical football game, and we understand that."
Tuesday afternoon the Vols enjoyed a beach party and then Wednesday morning it will be back to work preparing for Iowa in the TaxSlayer Bowl on Friday afternoon.