The Southern Conference Football Media Day took place earlier this week out in Ashville, NC, and ESPN+ had all the coverage.
We got an opportunity to hear from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s head ball coach Rusty Wright. You can hear the entire conversation below but here are some of my biggest takeaways from the conversation.
- Rusty Wright really had no interest in the spring season last year as he just moved quickly past that opening question.
- However, the spring season did prove to the guys that they’re a very talented football team.
- Have to love the QB competition this team has between Drayton Arnold, Cole Copeland, and transfer from Mercer in Chattanooga native Robert Riddle.
- They’ve got an extremely strong running back group with the big three of Ailym Ford, Gino Appleberry, and Tyrell Price. However, coach Wright was very adamant that Ford is a dude who’s built differently.
- 5 offensive linemen coming back including their leader Cole Strange-Makes life a lot easier for everybody. Those guys take pride in being good.
- The wide receiver group is really exciting with Reggie Henderson (who’s a converted safety) and Kanore Mckinnon who are their big two. Andrew Manning has looked good and there are young guys that’ll be pushing for playing time too, there’s a lot of competition.
- There’s a lot to be excited about defensively as DL Devonnsha Maxwell (6’2 300lbs) has transformed his body coming into this season.
- A couple of BIG transfers, no pun intended, with Giovanni Reviere (DL-6’5 265lbs)-Chattanooga guy went to McCallie (Has two years left-Graduate in Dec.) from Purdue and Montez Wilson (DL 6’3 245lbs) from Rhode Island-These guys had good quality depth.
- Two big returners at linebacker-Kam Jones, Ty Boeck.
- The secondary has some important returners who have played a lot of football in Brandon Dowdell (sr), Jerrell Lawson (sr) at the safety spots, and Cameron Smith (jr), Jordan Jones (sr) at the starting corner spots. The coach said, ”Might be the biggest bunch of competitors we have on the team”.
- Another thing that also stood out that coach Wright said was, “We have the talent to give ourselves an opportunity every Saturday”
This is going to be a very fun team to watch this coming season.
Check out what coach Rusty Wright had to say for yourself via ESPN+
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