Alex Golesh discusses Vols’ wide receivers ahead of Ball State game

Tennessee will kick off its 2022 season Sept. 1 versus Ball State at Neyland Stadium.

Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. EDT and SEC Network will televise the season-opening matchup.

Ahead of the Vols’ first game, second-year offensive coordinator and tight ends coach Alex Golesh discussed Tennessee’s wide receivers.

“I think we’re as deep at the receiver spot in terms of guys we feel good about playing right now,” Golesh said. “I think they’re still continuing to, one, get healthy. It was good to get a couple of days off, get some guys that we were being really, really careful with, with Jimmy Calloway, Chas (Nimrod), get those guys back healthy — Squirrel (White) — running around.

“I think a lot of it will depend on how this next week-and-a-half goes. I’ve said this before, how they handle camp and spring ball is one thing. How they handle what a real college football player is supposed to be and how they can handle the students on campus now. It’s rush week as I’m driving down Neyland (Drive), so I get it — how do they handle all of that? How do they go through a normal Tuesday, Wednesday, into a Thursday, a Friday, game day. Throwing 15 hours of class at them. I’m not trying to downplay who can play, who cannot play, but who cannot feel like a freshman as a freshman, and if we could play a bunch of guys, that would be awesome. I don’t have a number. I feel like we’re two-deep, two-and-a-half-deep there. A year ago, I felt like we started that way, and then I did not feel that way after we started conference play, so the hope is that we can be at eight guys that can roll through, that can keep us fresh, so we can play as fast as we possibly can, but that would be the goal is to have seven to eight that can go. I feel like we do at this point.”