It only took two days of spring practice for Tennessee to run into a mini controversy with a former Vols player
Well, that didn’t take long. The Tennessee Vols already have a dumb spring controversy on their hands.
It only took two days of spring practice for the Tennessee Vols to run into a mini “controversy”.
And it involves a former Tennessee player.
Spring practice getting underway means that plenty of videos of Tennessee players running routes and going through drills are flooding social media timelines.
One of those videos, via 247Sports’ Ben McKee, shows true freshman wide receiver TK Keys running a short out route.
Keys’ route running in that video has been heavily criticized, with some fans suggesting he looked slow.
Former Tennessee wide receiver Josh Smith, who played for the Vols from 2013 to 2017, chimed in on the video with a strong response.
“Not a fan of this rep at all,” tweeted Smith. “I hear ‘good’ after this route. We would’ve been mother****ed back in the day if we did this.”
Smith later deleted the tweet.
I’ve never been an SEC wide receiver, and I don’t know what Keys was trying to accomplish with that rep, so there’s not much “analysis” (at least that’s fair) that I can provide on the route.
Smith’s comment, though, carries a bit more weight considering he played wide receiver at Tennessee for five seasons.
Perhaps he deleted the comment because he wasn’t sure what the goal of that rep was. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to deal with the fallout (bad news: nothing is ever deleted on the internet).
Either way, I’m sure this is the last thing Tennessee wants to deal with after just two days of spring practice.
By the way, Smith played for two wide receivers coaches during his time at Tennessee — Zach Azzanni (now with the Las Vegas Raiders) and Kevin Beard (now with the Miami Hurricanes).
I’d love to know which one of those coaches would’ve been handing out the “motherf***s” for running that route.
Update:
Smith clarified on Wednesday that he didn’t know spring practice just started for the Vols.
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