KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The past two seasons have seen Tennessee football boast the most accurate and productive quarterback room in the country, and the Volunteers are seeking to continue that momentum in 2023.
Sixth-year senior quarterback Joe Milton III, true freshman five-star signee Nico Iamaleava and offensive coordinator Joey Halzle met with members of the media following Tennessee’s third spring practice on Thursday at Haslam Field.
The Volunteers worked out in helmets and shoulder pants, and they will culminate Week 1 with another practice on Saturday morning.
Milton III has completed 85-of-144 passes for 1,346 yards, 12 touchdowns and zero interceptions in his two seasons in Knoxville. He followed in his roommate Hendon Hooker’s, footsteps with a spectacular performance in the Orange Bowl. This spring, he is a defining leader on the team and encouraged the newcomers to play aggressive.
“Go make mistakes. It’s football, at the end of the day,” Milton said. Nico (Iamaleava) comes to me every night. Right after meetings, he asks me questions about the script. I’m willing to help anyway I can. That’s just me personally.”
“Joe has been great,” Iamaleava said. “(He’s) like a big brother to me when I first came here. Really just rallying all the troops around us, getting everybody to buy into what he’s trying to build and what the team’s trying to build. Joe has been great for me and a great big brother to me.”
The Vols host the Orange & White Game on Saturday, April 15 in Neyland Stadium. Start time is 2:30 p.m. ET.
Premium and non-premium seating will be available for the contest. Admission is $5 for non-premium seats, and all proceeds will count as a contribution to the My All Campaign. All seats can be secured now at AllVols.com or by calling the UT Athletic Ticket Office at (865) 656-1200. All open sections of the bowl of Neyland Stadium will be general admission seating.
Below are quotes from Thursday’s media session:
Offensive Coordinator Joey Halzle
March 23, 2023
On the offensive approach over the past 3 days of practice…
“I’ve been pleased with it. Whenever you’re replacing this many parts there’s some sloppiness that goes into it but the guys are playing hard and that’s all we ask of the guys. While you’re learning, while you’re trying to figure out your new jobs, your new roles, just play really hard while you’re working through it. We’ve seen that. It’s been good we had some hiccups on the first couple of days where it wasn’t quite as clean as it maybe could have been, but now it’s a great wake-up for all the guys to be like, ‘wait, I don’t get to just show up and do this, I have to put in the extra work, I have to show up in the meetings, I have to get my extra film.’ It’s been a really good couple of days of practice.”
On how difficult it is for receivers to adjust to the system…
“It’s a different animal, we’re very different from a standard offense. But if guys are good at feeling space and if they’re good at understanding structures of defense, good at reading leverage, they are really good at what we do. What we do is different but it’s also for guys that understand it. That’s why they excel the way they do.”
On Nathan Leacock…
“He’s a good-sized kid that can really run. When he gets out and goes and he’s playing decisive and he’s playing fast, he has legitimate track speed. He’s a big fast guy running down the middle of the field, which is always fun to see.”
On Joe Milton III having the same competitive edge as Hendon Hooker…
“Yeah, absolutely. Joe knows that he is competing against himself, that’s been the switch that he has made. He doesn’t need something external motivating him, he’s motivated by himself. He is trying to go out and be the best he is, he knows he’s got one year of eligibility left and he is trying to take advantage of it. There’s no kind of laid back, I don’t have another old guy next to me or something like that. He’s competitive, he’s dialed in every single day when he takes the field.”
On Ethan Davis…
“Ethan is really, really skilled. He’s bigger than you think he is when you see him out there in pads, that’s a big kid. Really good sized kid, he can run, he’s fluid, he’s got loose hips and he’s been really impressive to watch on the field. He’s rolling, so he’s going with us. His cleared, cut loose and he’s playing ball.”
On the areas early enrollees are benefiting the most in…
“The biggest thing, I just had the conversation with the guys leaving the field, is getting to go through spring ball. It allows you to just make mistakes and fail forwards, so when you get down to fall camp when it’s time to start getting ready and the real bullets are about to start flying, you’re not making those initial freshman mistakes of just trying to figure out what is actually going on. What’s my call, seeing the signal, getting my cleats in the ground, all that type of stuff. You get to do that now, so now when you take the field in August, coming back at fall camp, you get to go play the way you know how to play. You’re not trying to figure out what’s going on. That’s the biggest advantage, that you get to fail forward every single day.”
On Joe Milton III being able to reach another level than at the Clemson game…
“He absolutely has another level he can and should go to. He’s older but that was really only his fourth start for us, I believe. He’s got a lot of ball left to play. He made a lot of really good decisions, he protected the football, he threw it aggressively when it was time to throw it aggressively. He’s doing that at a high level now, too. I’ve been really pleased with him, but he definitely has another level that he can reach.”
On how Nico Iamaleava has been responding to the amount of reps and attention he has been receiving…
“He’s been really good. He’s mature beyond his years – he doesn’t act like a freshman. But with that said, the first time you take the field, no matter how prepared, you are going from high school to college. It’s fast, there’s a lot more on you. We put as much on the quarterback as anybody in the country, if not more. It’s a lot. He’s handling it well with a great attitude. He stays positive and he competes at a really high level. He just lets his athleticism take over too which is fun to watch. So he’s been great, but it is hard. People forget how hard it is to come in and play as a true freshman at any level of college football. It’s just a different area.”
On Iamaleava’s confidence in making decisions on the football field…
“That’s been my focus the whole time, telling him, ‘you’re going to make mistakes.’ So, awesome. Now that we know that, there’s no reason to play timid. If we know we’re going to make this mistake, we’re going to throw some picks this spring as we’re learning and figuring out new defensive structures. So there’s now nothing to play timid about if we know that’s coming. Just going out there and ripping it. It’s fun to watch him when he lets that thing go and when he’s just playing confident out there. It’s just going to keep coming and keep coming as he gets more and more consistent and more comfortable in the offense.”
On the improvement of Milton’s short-pass accuracy…
“It’s been high-end. That’s one of the biggest things he did so well against Clemson was our underneath game and our mid-range stuff was completed at a really high clip. I can’t remember the exact percentage, but it was at a high level. We work at it every single day. He’s got a bazooka. He can throw it through a wall if he wants to. So, let’s just touch all of these up when we’re in routes-on-air. What I always say, we work on that during our individual and routes-on-air, but when it’s time to take the field, you have to see it and react. If it calls to be touched up, touch it up. If it’s time to put a little vapor trail on it, drive off your back hip and let that thing go. I’m never going to pull him back and not let him use what he has, but we’ll work on what he needs during our individual periods.”
On the difference coaching a player to be confident, versus being reckless…
“One of my sayings I always say to my guys is there is an absolute difference between aggressive, and reckless. Aggressive is: you see a defense, you know what you’re getting, you got somebody, and it may be a tight window, and you’re going to drive it on them because you know you can. You’re in your fundamentals, you’re on-time and you know what you’re getting. Reckless is: I’m climbing the pocket, I don’t see what’s happening and I just turn and launch it as far as I can because I’m trying to make a play. That’s reckless. Or, I’m late to something, I still think I’m going to throw that because I wanted to throw that. We call a shot, I’m throwing the shot, if it’s not there we’ll check it down. There’s an absolute difference between aggressive and reckless. We hit that every single day with them. I want them to see what they’re supposed to see, get their body in the right position and then aggressively drive it. But if you’re late, off-timing or don’t know what you’re getting, you don’t just rip that thing. You have to find your back, find your tight end, find the checkdown and drop that thing down. It’s a completely different animal, but they are coached that way. In the same breath, when they do make a mistake that’s aggressive, you can’t tell them to be aggressive and then chew them out for making a mistake. It doesn’t work that way. You have to let them make their mistakes as they’re playing aggressive, and then coach the mentality through it to make sure we’re not pre-determining what we’re throwing. There’s a difference between that, seeing what I’m seeing and reacting to it.”
On Iamaleava’s adjustment to fitting in Tennessee’s offense and facing college-level defenses…
“It’s probably pretty similar, there’s more on the quarterbacks here pre-snap than what he had done. You’re still seeing your structures, route concepts and all that type of stuff. There’s always some kind of carry over with that. With the pace we go at, him having to make the calls and understand his protections, pressure rules and his loaded and unloaded rules, that’s a whole different animal. Day One, against Coach Banks’ defense, you’re getting the kitchen sink thrown at you right from the beginning. My message to him after practice that first day was: ‘this is good. You have no idea how good this is for you, seeing these funky blitzes, front-stem, going from three-down to four-down, it’s all over the place, but you have to play fast and still operate within it.’ This is setting up for success here moving forward, because you’re going to get every look under the sun this spring and summer.”
On if Tim Banks tries to prepare quarterbacks in practice by trying to confuse them…
“I love it. If Coach Banks ever asks if I need to see anything specific I say bring it. I want our guys to have to react. That’s how aggressive he calls the game, he calls the game extremely aggressively. What we do on defense matches what we do on offense. It’s fun to watch him call and every once and a while, he gets you and you think, that was a good one right there. It’s a fun little cat-and-mouse and it’s so beneficial for our entire team. We’re talking about the quarterbacks but it’s the wideouts, tight ends, pressures coming from everywhere, hot adjustments, it’s something new everyday they have to adjust to.”
RS-Senior QB Joe Milton III
On if he has relayed the message that last year doesn’t have an impact on this season…
“Yes, I pretty much let the team know that. Whatever happened last year, we can’t go back and change it, we can’t go back and help it. Only thing we can do now is get better as a team now and prove for the guys that we have on our team now.”
On what he tries to tell freshmen that he wishes he had been told earlier…
“Go make mistakes. It’s football, at the end of the day, it’s football. Nico (Iamaleava) comes to me every night, right after meetings he asks me questions about the script. I’m willing to help anyway I can. That’s just me personally. For any freshman in the country, it doesn’t have to be just for Tennessee, go make a mistake. You never know what’s going to happen. Keep being you. It’s not like high school, things are sped up, but at the same time, it’s football. Go learn what you need to learn and do what you need to do.”
On if he feels like he could have played even better in the Orange Bowl last season…
“Most definitely. Seeing things correctly. I don’t think I missed a throw that game but seeing things correctly. There are certain reads in our playbook that as a quarterback you have to be able to understand and do. Throughout that game, some of those things I did not do. I feel like we could have had more points on the board if I would have done those things correctly. But, it’s not all about me, so we won and that’s all that matters.”
Freshman QB Nico Iamaleava
On his first few days of spring practice in regard to expectations and learning the offense…
“It’s been super fun. Just learning from (Joe Milton III), the whole playbook. It’s been slowing down for me these past couple of days. Not really thinking as much as I was on the first day. Really just taking everything from Coach Joey (Halzle) and Joe and just learning day-by-day.
On how being an early enrollee has benefited him the most…
“Coming in early benefited me a lot. Just getting in the Miami practices, getting those under my belt, seeing the live college reps, what college players look like, adjusting to the speed a little bit more. I still think I’m adjusting to speed as we’re still going, but those early practices definitely helped me.”
On what Joe Milton III has been like as a leader to him and the rest of the offense…
“Joe has been great. Like a big brother to me when I first came here. Really just rallying all the troops around us, getting everybody to buy into what he’s trying to build and what the team’s trying to build. Joe has been great for me and a great big brother to me.”
Freshman TE Ethan Davis
On if he’s had any moments where he’s noticed a big different between college and high school…
“I had one today actually. We were doing a drill and I was going against a big linebacker, he hit me in the head, (I) fell, (it) hurt, (I) felt it. But that’s probably my a-ha moment right there. It felt good though, you know what I mean? Just to see like, ‘alright, now I’m really here, being able to play the college football game.'”
On learning all the responsibilities of the tight end position in this offense…
“It’s really, really important for me because in high school I was mainly a receiver. But, being able to have Coach Abes (Alec Abeln) there, he’s a great teacher of how to block, where to go when blocking, stuff like that. Being able to have him as my tight ends coach, that definitely is an advantage when you’re working in the box because he knows the box so well.”
On being ready to play this year…
“It’s definitely been talked about, just being able to pick up stuff fast. And I feel like me and Cally (McCallan Castles) – he’s a great teammate, great leader, great player, great tight end and I watch him, learn from him because he’s done all this already. He knows how to read a defense and all that stuff, so I just look up to Cally, read what he does, takes things from him that I didn’t know how to do and just being able to learn from him.”
Freshman WR Nathan Leacock
On the toughest adjustment since arriving at Tennessee…
“I would say the toughest adjustment, which isn’t really too hard, but playing to the speed of the offense. Coming from high school to the college level, the high school level is way slower. Coming into Coach Heupel’s offense, everything is fast-paced. That’s why we were the leading offense in the country. Just trying to adjust to that and adapt to that is the only thing that’s been pretty difficult.”
On how enrolling early has benefited him…
“I think it’s a great benefit to anyone who’s just trying to go to college, especially those that have the opportunity. I think you should take advantage of that opportunity. Not only from a football standpoint, but body-wise—people here train your body, make sure you eat right, make sure you’re running, getting faster—not just putting on a bunch of muscle, coaching yourself and not being able to move at that weight. Also, just learning the offense early so once you get on the field, it’s just about playing football. You’re not coming in with the season already started. You’re coming in early so you can learn the plays and adjust to those passes that are going to be coming a little bit faster than high school. I think it was a great opportunity, and I’m glad I came early.”
On which older receivers have helped him since he arrived at Tennessee…
“When you have leaders, some lead by example and some lead by words. I would say Bru McCoy is one of those guys who leads me by words. Even when we are just doing routes on air, he’s making sure I perfect certain skills. Also, Jack Jancek has been helping me a lot. Just teaching me stuff with words and making sure I detail the routes. They all want the best for me. They’re looking out for my best interest and making sure I’m doing everything right. I would say someone who maybe leads by example is a guy like Ramel Keyton. I’m always seeing him working. He rarely ever drops a pass. All of the time, he’s giving full effort. He’s one of the last guys who is always catching extra passes, so he’s one of those guys who I would say leads by example. Guys like Jack and Bru lead with their words.”
-UT Athletics
