Tight ends were ‘elite’ in week one in the run game
When you rush for nearly 300 yards, there’s plenty going well in your run game. And that was the case on Saturday in Tennessee’s win over Virginia.
Tennessee’s tailbacks didn’t have a negative yard rushing which meant they had a good day. It also means the offensive line, which is reshaped with new starters from a year ago and without Cooper Mays, had a good day.
“Running backs ran extremely hard,” head coach Josh Heupel said. “Everybody could see that. I thought our front five and our tight ends did a phenomenal job of communicating. I thought they did a great job on their double-teams. They played and finished the play extremely hard.”
Oftentimes the tight ends importance to the run game is overlooked, but as we have learned in the last two years, the tight end position is an important piece to Heupel’s offensive puzzle. Offensive coordinator Joey Halzle was thrilled with the play of the tight ends in week one.
“Our tight ends were elite with handling all the different fronts and finding their way off of it and inserting coming across it was good,” Halzle said.
A year ago, Princeton Fant was the key to the tight end room as he impacted the offense in a variety of ways. Tennessee got good news when Jacob Warren decided to return for his ‘super senior’ season, but Warren and obviously Tennessee recognized they need more help at the position which is why they went and got transfer McCallen Castles from the portal, who had an impressive showing in week one.
“We were really excited about him through the whole recruiting process. When he told us he wanted to come it was huge for us so we were excited about him from the beginning. The biggest jump he has made is that he came from an offense that wasn’t tempo. So this spring he was almost just trying to figure out where to I go and who do I target,” Halzle said of Castles progress.
“He put in so much work from the time spring ended to fall camp to where he didn’t seem like a first year player in the offense any more. He’s an older kid. He understands ball and knows what it takes, but to actually put that in. He is a big time blocker and pass catcher. He’s really good with the ball in his hands. He can stretch the field vertically and he’s gotten his weight up. He was I think 238 when he got here and he’s right around 250 right now. He’s putting in the work and you can see it on the field.”
There were plenty of unknowns about Castles’ ability to block at this level given the success he enjoyed as a receiver in the passing game at UC-Davis, and some unknowns in how they used him at his previous program. At nearly 6-5 and 235 pounds, he was thought of more as a big receiver than as a true tight end, but his game according to Halzle, is very complete
“He is a tight end. He’s a mismatch. He’s just under 6-5, 250 pounds and he can run. He’s not natural hands and he’s not scared to feed up in the hole and go one on one with the linebacker. He’s a complete package.”
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