When you rush for nearly 300 yards, there\u2019s plenty going well in your run game. And that was the case on Saturday in Tennessee\u2019s win over Virginia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tennessee\u2019s tailbacks didn\u2019t 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<\/a><\/strong>, had a good day.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRunning backs ran extremely hard,\u201d head coach Josh Heupel<\/a><\/strong> said. \u201cEverybody 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u2019s offensive puzzle. Offensive coordinator Joey Halzle<\/a><\/strong> was thrilled with the play of the tight ends in week one.<\/p>\n \u201cOur tight ends were elite with handling all the different fronts and finding their way off of it and inserting coming across it was good,\u201d Halzle said.\u00a0<\/p>\n A year ago, Princeton Fant<\/strong> 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 \u2018super senior\u2019 season, but Warren and obviously Tennessee recognized they need more help at the position which is why they went and got transfer McCallen Castles<\/a><\/strong> from the portal, who had an impressive showing in week one.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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\u2019t tempo. So this spring he was almost just trying to figure out where to I go and who do I target,\u201d Halzle said of Castles progress. <\/p>\n \u201cHe put in so much work from the time spring ended to fall camp to where he didn\u2019t seem like a first year player in the offense any more. He\u2019s 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\u2019s really good with the ball in his hands. He can stretch the field vertically and he\u2019s gotten his weight up. He was I think 238 when he got here and he\u2019s right around 250 right now. He\u2019s putting in the work and you can see it on the field.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There were plenty of unknowns\u00a0 about Castles\u2019 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<\/p>\n \u201cHe is a tight end. He\u2019s a mismatch. He\u2019s just under 6-5, 250 pounds and he can run. He\u2019s not natural hands and he\u2019s not scared to feed up in the hole and go one on one with the linebacker. He\u2019s a complete package.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The post Tight ends were \u2018elite\u2019 in week one in the run game<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you rush for nearly 300 yards, there\u2019s plenty going well in your run game….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}