No time to rest for Kiffin, staff

Cue up the videotape.

Before a Big Orange Caravan luncheon at the Cleveland Country Club on Monday, UT coach Lane Kiffin said he and his staff will spend the next week or so re-watching tape of spring practices to develop offseason goals and plans for players heading into offseason workouts. Kiffin said coaches will give strength coach Mark Smith a plan for each player.

They also could make a decision on UT's starting quarterback heading into the fall.

The offensive coaches, particularly Kiffin, offensive coordinator Jim Chaney and quarterbacks coach David Reaves, will watch, evaluate and grade every aspect of every snap taken by UT's three quarterbacks over 15 spring practices and scrimmages.

Kiffin stopped short of naming a frontrunner Monday, although he indicated at times this spring that fifth-year senior Jonathan Crompton made strides toward becoming the starter.

"We're going to still break it down, the whole spring, go back and take all their throws and put them together by concept and everything," Kiffin said. "At that point, maybe we'll be able to put something together. We may not, just go into fall. We'll figure it out."

Crompton, who spent most of spring practice working with the first team and started Saturday's Orange and White game, said his list of improvements to make is long.

"I've got to get better, pretty much at everything," he said. "I'm trying to hone in on the little things. I think I had a decent spring. Like I said 100 times, I'm out there practicing like I'm the fifth-team guy. I've got a chip on my shoulder. I'm trying to get out there and just play. Impressing guys is good, but you've also got to play for yourself."

UT's quarterbacks combined to complete 38 of 70 passes Saturday for 434 yards, four touchdowns and one interception. Kiffin was pleased with that performance, but he also wants to temper his enthusiasm because UT's defense did not blitz or stunt and used only a handful of defensive fronts.

"I don't want to downplay it, but I've got to be realistic," Kiffin said. "It does help by the setup of it, by knowing what was coming on defense and all of sudden not having new things they'd never seen before coming at them and limiting them to what we did on defense.

"As excited as I am about how they played and their decision making, one interception in 68 attempts or something like that, that's pretty neat. I have to taper that a little bit with knowing what the setup was, too."

SEC Tops: Asked about his impressions of the SEC, Kiffin called the SEC "the best conference in football" and "a special place" although he said that recruiting in the conference isn't that much different than his time at Southern California.

The Trojans competed for - and landed - many of the nation's best prospects, often battling SEC schools and other national programs.

"At the end of the day, it's recruiting and it's football," he said. "You're coaching football and you're trying to get your guys better and you're coming up with plays to do that.

"In recruiting, you're going to try to get the best players. I'm sorry to tell you, I think a little too much gets made of it, that there's this big difference in recruiting. I hope that we kind of showed that. There were some questions of this staff coming, that I hadn't been in the SEC and that some of our coaches from the NFL hadn't been here, but I think they put together a great class."

Kiffin Enjoying Caravan: The Big Orange Caravan continues for the next few weeks, but all the public speaking is a little new for Kiffin.

Kiffin said he typically made only one public appearance a year while an assistant coach at Southern California and virtually none in parts of two seasons as head coach of the Oakland Raiders.

"It's very valuable for me because of not having the background in Tennessee and not knowing very much about it, the people and the different areas," Kiffin said of various public appearances since being introduced as UT's head coach on Dec. 1. "I look at it for me as a great opportunity to get out and touch a lot of people and go to different areas I've never been to."

Drew Edwards covers University of Tennessee football. He may be reached at 865-342-6274.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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