Q. Now that you're getting to the season, you said you didn't love everything you said or have done. Getting to the season, is it time to let the product do the talking for me and I'm going to tone down the bravado a bit? Do you anticipate now it's time to play the game and this is the product we have?
Lane Kiffin: Naturally it tones down because there's something to focus on. We're real excited about getting this season underway, looking forward to the opener. We have a ton of work to do. We're just excited to get to the first day of practice.
Q. Eric Berry is arguably your best athlete. Why not line him up at quarterback and take your chances?
Lane Kiffin: A couple reasons. First thing, I think that's not fair to him. Eric most likely won't be back a year from now. So to take Eric, who is not remember, he's going into his third year, but it's not a third year of the same defense. This is the first year of this new defense for him to learn. If you take all that practice time away from Eric, who is a great leader for us, who is a great player for us, who is potentially a top five pick in the NFL, you put him over there in the offense, he loses all that practice time at defense, you're over there trying to run some stuff with him at quarterback, number one, that's not fair to him. Number two, you're not developing your other guys.
This isn't just about today. We have to look for our future. We need to develop our other players at the positions they're supposed to be at. You hinder his development at defense, which is not fair to him, and you hinder the development of our offense as well.
Q. You mentioned the three receivers that are injured. What does that mean for Nu'Keese Richardson?
Lane Kiffin: He was going to get a great opportunity to play anyway. This gives him more of a chance to play. In the reports downstairs from him working out, he's had a great off season. He's been there for probably five weeks now, I think. Has done well academically. Really been working hard down there. Gained some weight. We look for big things from Nu'Keese. Even if those guys were healthy, we were looking for that. This is more of an opportunity for him stepping up.
Q. You mentioned there's no four or five year plan any more. Do you feel pressure to kind of win immediately because of that?
Lane Kiffin: Well, I don't feel any pressure because we apply so much pressure ourselves. I think our staff is so competitive and our expectations are so high of us as coaches and of our players that I don't feel anybody adds any pressure to that.
But we know what conference we're in. We know what school we're at. That school, the people around us, expect us to win. They expect us to win a lot of games. And I love it. I love being a part of that. I would not want to be somewhere where the expectations are down because that's not who I am. I want to be around people that want to operate at the highest level and be in the most competitive conference and be at the top of it every single year. I love that our fan base thinks that way.
Q. The commissioner made a point the other day talking about secondary violations, that the league takes them seriously. I wanted your reaction to that. Do you think coaches around the conference have gotten that message from the league?
Lane Kiffin: I think we definitely have. I can only speak on my behalf. I would say this: we've had a number of violations and I don't think it's a crazy amount comparable to other schools. I want to make sure you guys understand this. Not one of the violations that occurred to us was something we planned, set out to say we're going to create a violation. I don't think any of the violations we had gained us an advantage in recruiting. We did not set out to do something on a specific plan of creating violations to gain an advantage.
We are under a great effort as a staff to make sure we don't have any more. Sometimes they happen. I think what happened to us a little bit, too, is unfortunately of our 10 coaches, nine assistants and myself, five of those coaches last year were in the NFL. So when you come back, we probably weren't as educated as some other schools on the little rules, how you interpret those. We did not do that on purpose at all. I can assure you that it's not our plan to continue that way.
Q. One of the sore spots for a lot of fans last year was the lack of use of Brandon Warren. Can you talk about how he's doing in the new offense, given all the injuries to the receivers?
Lane Kiffin: Yeah, Brandon had a really good spring. He had been playing tight end the year before, kind of a hybrid tight end position last year. We moved him to receiver now. He's lost some weight. Really had a good spring out there. Had a good spring game, did a number of things. He could be one of those guys, because of injuries, that he even gets to play more. We're excited about him.
Q. Your dad coached a lot of great defensive players in his career. What is his assessment of Eric Berry's potential?
Lane Kiffin: I think he said to the media the other day, he made a statement, I don't know how he couldn't be the first pick of the draft. I think that's a pretty powerful statement about Eric.
But he really has been tirelessly watching so much film from last year, my dad has. He continues to get so excited about using Eric in different ways. He's not had a safety over the years that he's been able to play at nickel. They asked me to compare Taylor Maze and Eric the other day. I said they're really different because Taylor isn't a guy you could play at nickel. A bigger safety that couldn't play guys man to man, receivers. There aren't very many guys like that. There aren't very many guys in the NFL like that.
To have Eric, a guy that could come down and play nickel as well as be a safety, I think NFL teams are going to fall in love with him.
Q. Could you talk about how conducive you think your offense is to getting young guys on the field, how much of a priority that will be this year? Ed Orgeron's role in your program?
Lane Kiffin: I think it excites players in high school. Goes back to Southern Cal. We had freshmen All Americans at the skill position we were able to plug in right away. That's because we started coaching them the day we signed them. We started sending them DVDs, playbooks, until waiting till they got to us. Once we had them, we found out what could they do really well and make them do that great.
It's a philosophy that we use to take a guy like Nu'Keese. What can he do great? He can do this, this, and this. Don't try to make him do everything. He'll never get really good at anything if you make him do that. So I think it's an approach that helps guys play right away, and I think it will pay off for us this year.
Secondly, with Ed Orgeron, he's extremely valuable to us because I really think that he's kind of the passion of our program, that our players and our coaches feed off of his energy. This is someone that is a tireless worker. I can't imagine there's a better recruiter out there than Ed, if you go back and look back at guys that he's recruited over the years and developed once again, you go back to hiring recruiters and coaches, look at the defensive linemen, go all the way back to Miami, then USC, then all the players he recruited, all the great players that are at Ole Miss right now that he recruited there. Unbelievable job of evaluating the players, then also getting them there.
Q. You've mentioned Ed Orgeron's success on recruiting. He has a big hand in what Ole Miss has now. You worked with him at Southern Cal. He's not the most easy guy to understand sometimes when he gets talking. What is his success in being such a good recruiter? What's the basis for how good he is as a recruiter?
Lane Kiffin: I think it's the relentless effort, the relationships that he develops with everybody around the recruit, the coach, the parents, the aunts, the uncles. He's just so relentless. He doesn't take no for an answer.
Marsalis Teague was a receiver DB that was committed to Florida from Tennessee. So when we got there, we got on him, he wasn't committed yet. Ed wasn't there yet. We couldn't get him. He committed to Florida. He said, I really appreciate everything, but I'm going to go to Florida. Ed had just gotten there. Ed got on the phone and told him, You're going to sign with Tennessee. Go ahead and announce that you're committing, but you'll sign here.
He came into our staff meeting. This shows you his confidence. He put it on the board in front of the whole staff. We got some young coaches that didn't know Ed, aren't used to this confidence. He put on the board, I guarantee every single one of you Marsalis Teague will sign with the University of Tennessee on signing day. That shows you the confidence.
From that day, he did everything he could do to make sure he signed and turned him away from Florida. He's relentless the way he goes about it. Anywhere he's been, the recruitment and development of the players has been phenomenal.
S Eric Berry
Q. Eric, I know you played quarterback in high school. Could you handle a hundred snaps playing 50 maybe at quarterback in any capacity and then playing defense? Physically could you handle that?
Eric Berry: I believe I could. But right now I think I'm helping my team out the most being well and fresh on defense. I think that's where I have the big contribution to my team, is at safety. If they do want to do that, then we'll talk about it. But right now that's where I'm helping them at.
Q. Could you talk about what the LSU guys can look forward to with John Chavis, how he'll motivate and drive them?
Eric Berry: They just need to look forward to a great coach. They couldn't have a better defensive coordinator down there. Coach Chavis is a very intense guy. He knows what he wants in a defense and what he wants out of his players. That's what he's gonna expect from them. But they should have a lot of fun playing for Coach Chavis.
Q. What do you think of the whole Heisman campaign? Did they talk to you beforehand? Were you all for it?
Eric Berry: Just hearing that they wanted to push the campaign for me, I mean, that made me feel very good. I really love the UT staff for doing that for me. I mean, it's been fun. They notified me of it. I was all for it. I do appreciate that from them. It's pretty cool. I like this deal.
Q. What is your best Monte Kiffin story or how can you best describe Monte Kiffin?
Eric Berry: I know he got tired of recruiting. Coming from Tampa Bay, the NFL, he really didn't know the recruiting side of college football. He was talking to me about how he was tired of flying. He didn't want to fly. He's like, I just want to get on the grass and coach, E. That's all I want to dol I want to get on the field and coach you guys. I don't want to do any more recruiting.
He was kind of spilling his heart to me. We both really laughed about it. It was really funny.
Q. What do you think of Lane's colorful collection of comments this off season?
Eric Berry: I mean, we were 5-7 last year. We just thought we were in this thing by ourselves last year, not having anybody on our side. We were 5-7. So when he comes in and says that he has confidence in us, basically, and saying that he has faith in us, I mean, the team went crazy.
Man, he really does believe in us. Just seeing somebody having that type of faith in us after a 5-7 season, who wouldn't want to play for him? Who wouldn't want to put theirself on the line for him? That's what we're doing right now in this off season. That's what we're going to do in the season.
Q. As good as your defense was last year, with the addition of Monte Kiffin, with the struggles offensively, the injuries they've had, is there pressure on you knowing that you may have to carry this team the first third of the season or so?
Eric Berry: No, it's no pressure at all. I mean, we're a family. The offense takes care of the defense, and the defense takes care of the offense, no matter what's going on. There's been times where we couldn't stop offenses. Our offense comes in and keeps scoring points. Perfect example was when Erik Ainge was here, we went into four overtimes with Kentucky. They kept fighting and scoring. Likewise, on D where we got to hold the guys, get our offense a chance to score.
Q. Obviously Tennessee has a long history of winning. Last season wasn't so great. Do you feel like you have to have success immediately in order to help Coach Kiffin out and get back to those winning ways in order for him to maybe secure his job there for a long time?
Eric Berry: Yeah, I feel like we're the class, the new era of Coach Kiffin. This is the first impression, or whatever, that he has on the nation. We've been working really hard to make him look good to everyone else, you know. He's been working hard, just been in the office grinding, doing all types of work, long hours and everything. We're just trying to make that impression on everyone in the nation, just do it for ourselves, too, to get back to the SEC championship.
RB Montario Hardesty
On the new staff:
"The new coaching staff has brought a lot of excitement to our program. The fans are very exciting about the upcoming season. It's been very easy to buy into the new program. It's good for our program to be on TV. as much as we have. Lane Kiffin had a plan for our program from the moment he came in. I think being on TV. can't hurt us. It just brings more excitement for the upcoming year. The coaching staff stands up for us and we're behind them 100 percent."
On the offensive line:
"I'm very excited about our offensive line. Our first unit guys are all veterans, they played well in the spring, and you can see them continue to improve. I think this new system will be a great asset for us this fall. I can't wait to get the taste of 5-7 out of our mouth. Let's go get some W's under our belt."
On Coach Gran:
"Coach Gran brings a lot of energy to the meeting room. It's exciting. He's had so many players in the league; seven or eight backs. He wants you to fit into everything we do on the field. He's teaching you to be a better person. It's great to have him as my coach."
You can find the full Tennessee Volunteers press conference transcript by following this link.
SEC Football
Share: 
