San Diego wildfires impacting Pope’s family

Cody Pope's family went through this once.

Now, so far from home, the freshman offensive lineman is suffering long distance as wildfires spread around his home in San Diego.

"I just talked to my parents earlier today," Pope said after the University of Tennessee's indoor practice on Wednesday.

"They evacuated last night and they're going to try and find out later if anything serious happened to our house. Just keep everybody in your prayers."

Pope's parents managed to load up four truckloads of possessions and relocated to stay with his brother in central San Diego, away from the wind-driven fires.

"The hardest thing about it is I've already had a house burn down five years ago," Pope said. "So this would be the second house in less than 10 years. That would be horrible.

"I think it's really emotional for my parents, hearing their voices. My mom was trying to sound brave, but it's really hard for them to pack everything up again to get out of there. It's really hard not knowing exactly what's happening."

Pope's parents told him 19 fires have started in recent days with arson expected as a cause in several of those.

"My mom said there were 500,000 people evacuated," Pope said. "All the schools and Qualcomm Stadium (home of the Chargers) are full as shelters. It's amazing."

UT running back Arian Foster, also from San Diego, said he didn't have any immediate family in the area.

"None of my immediate family lives in San Diego anymore, but I have a lot of friends and people I'm close to still there," he said. "The closest immediate family I have is in Los Angeles and Orange County.

"They're not evacuated as of yet, but everybody's a little worried about it. My heart goes out to everybody going through that right now."

Briscoe, Taylor Return: UT got some good news on the receiver front as preparations continued for Saturday night's home game South Carolina.

Receivers Josh Briscoe (concussion) and Lucas Taylor (turf toe) are still slowed but cleared to play.

"They gave me the go-ahead and just gave me limited contact," Briscoe said. "We'll take it from there and see how I am (Thursday)."

Briscoe, who suffered another concussion as a sophomore in high school, said he doesn't even remember a catch he made for a first down against Alabama.

"My head hit the back of the turf," he said. "I got up and stumbled to the sideline and came back in and played about four more snaps.

"I got a catch, but I don't remember it. Anytime you get a head injury you've just got to take precautions."

Fulmer said he's counting on Briscoe and Taylor to be available against the Gamecocks.

"Lucas and Briscoe will play unless something happens between now and Saturday," Fulmer said. "He (Briscoe) did really well. He did everything today and of course there wasn't any contact.

"He looks really good and I was concerned about that because they said Sunday and Monday it was a pretty significant concussion, but he really toughened up."

Moore, Jones Ready: Just in case Briscoe and Taylor continue to feel the ill effects, receivers coach Trooper Taylor and Fulmer said Denarius Moore and Gerald Jones are two guys ready to step in and contribute.

"They're a lot closer," Taylor said. "There's no substitute for experience and that's one thing they lack and you can tell timing wise.

"But the more they've done it in practice, and game-like situations in practice, the better they've gotten. I'm looking forward to seeing what they're going to do."

Hefney Sick: Some kind of bug is definitely making its way around UT players this week.

On Wednesday, it was Jonathan Hefney's turn to miss practice.

"We've got a little virus thing going around that lasts about 24 hours," Fulmer said. "We've had several with it this week. Demonte (Bolden) actually missed yesterday's practice with it."

Asked how you manage something like that and Fulmer laughed.

"Manage a flu bug?" he asked. "I can do a lot of things, but I don't know if I can do that.

"We're just giving them the vitamins and the juices and all the things you can. We sent a couple home because we didn't want it to spread."