Tennessee Football Postgame: Nico Iamaleava, Bru McCoy, Dont'e Thornton | Vol Football Week 1

Yaya and Dante thoron Jr so if you have a question please raise your hand I will call on you we'll start with Austin and then we'll go to Noah Nico just kind of assess you know your first start here at nean and then uh you know what it was like to connect with brew and a game yeah it felt great man just going out there competing with my guys um you know we put a lot of work into this uh for this year so you know it felt good to go out there and display what we've been working on now go ahead uh Dante just obviously coming off that injury working for you so well there today just how did it feel to be able to play how much more comfortable do you feel outside I say it felt great really I felt like I needed to have like would have been my first game back I felt like this is the game that I expected to have so I felt very good Bandon then Adam bre Ando could both of you speak on what you've seen from Dante from last season going to this season and and kind of the offseason that the care all had together just um a ton of Relentless hard work you know just grinding working hard every single day you know Finding ways just to improve himself like I mean it's been awesome to see and it's it's driven me and pushed me to be better yeah man you can just see how comfortable uh how much more comfortable Dante got with this offense man you know just his first year going into last year still figuring things out and you know I feel like he was dialed in this whole fall Camp spring camp and yeah man he's been great great work that he's put in and you know he went out there and showed it on the field today Adam and then Brent Nico your numbers were great obviously can you tell us something that you didn't do really well something that you think you youd like to have back or want to work of yeah I thought I didn't finish uh the second quarter well um I can finish better with with you know just operating offense at a high level um and uh really I think that was the main thing for me was not falling asleep during you know while we're up big and uh still going out there and operating the offense at a high level right you just kind of walk through the day what it kind of felt like this morning I know you've been waiting on that some first C first couple of catches I know it was old hat when she got going but what did today feel like for you yeah I mean it it was a little bit surreal just regoing through everything and um you know but but I really enjoyed it I I soaked it in and um you know once getting back out on the field and you get you get a good sweat going and you know you feel back at home well Cari and Patrick been back to Austin go did you know that you set a Tennessee program record for passing yards and a half and if so what was your reaction yeah I didn't know um couple of my teammates were telling me and then the the little interview I had at the end of the game was was really when I found out and uh yeah man it was cool sural moment I I didn't even know about it but uh felt good to go out there and operate with my teammates after you uh it was the big Play Down coming this way on the post that you had to go up a little bit to catch and after you caught it you were pretty demonstrative in your celebration was that a feeling of that moment of that play or was it just sort of a culmination of everything that they been yeah a little bit of that and also um you know since this is my first game since I lost my grandfather and he he was actually I made a very similar catch to the last game he got to see me play so that came to mind it it it jazzed me up Dante coach typle talked about you know how much more comfortable you felt once they moved you back outside last year um what is it about playing out there that makes you more confident as a player I say my whole football career I played an outside receiver so I feel like with me going back there last year I started to easily adjust to the offense and then with me having a full off season I feel like that helped me even more it made me more confident with everything we go David and then Vince then back to B guys this can be for any of y'all but this was a a 38 to nothing game 20 minutes in what can y'all learn from a game like this and did y'all feel stressed at any time or any adverse situations that you had to push through what what do you kind of learn from a game like this all us oh yeah um shoot to to keep our foot on their throat um when when we go up big I think still coming to the sideline with the same mindset that is 0 um and you know just carrying that out the the full game full four quarters like coach hop says ni you guys ran for 300 yards D Samson 124 he looked sharp tell tell me about what you saw from him specifically including what you've seen in Camp going in yeah man it felt great seeing s out there um you know he was limited in Fall camp in spring so um just seeing him out there and you know doing his thing it felt good man um we didn't really get to see too much of it during Camp so yeah man um Sam's always been damp and uh you know you got to see what he does when he gets the ball in his hands all right well go Ben Weston will finish up B with this group Dante what was your mindset going into the off season and is there one particular thing that maybe you can point to that that's allowed you to feel more comfortable in this offense in your CH I say my mindset going into the offseason was the uh like instead of letting the game like get to me so much just like have fun with it and really like I know that at a young age my reason for playing football was for me have fun so it was for me to have fun so like knowing that now I got the college a lot a lot more aspects into it that can make the game stressful I had to like bring myself back to the old ways I should thinking like at the end of the day I was just football so out there have fun so I say that the main thing I work on this offseason was like my mindset and like my mental game was there a point during the kind of the bounceback progress and comeing back from everything where you felt like you you were moving like yourself again you were able to kind of make all the cuts and do everything and everything would be good with the leg Yeah Yeah it it probably happened um you know somewhere around April May um but yeah once that happens you just you start feeling more confident and then um you kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel a couple more Adam Austin brw um a lot of guys don't come back as strongly as as you have from an injury like this you mentioned your grandfather how would your grandfather have reacted to the way you've come back um man I can't think anybody that would have been more proud actually when I was flown flown home to see him in the hospital uh um I took my boot off and took my first steps out of my boot when he got out of his uh hospital bed so that was like a cool moment that we had together but man um you know I give a lot of my uh credit to my success to him because of you know kind of how he instilled a lot of values in in sports and just how to be a man so I I miss him a lot was he is he a strong minded guy yeah he was and he's he he's a great a he's a Heckman athlete he was a Hall of Famer at his at his college Pepperdine so yeah uh I try to take after him the best I can bro you made that number switch back to your old number um this year since you're coming back it was it made it easy to kind of do kind of kind of a new cleanse to you know kind of restart everything by going back to the old yeah some a little bit of that too and also like anybody that knows me knows I grew up like loving Reggie Bush and five's always been my number um I kind of wanted to let it breathe after hend and mo because the type of player he was and how what everything he accomplished so after a year I was like I want to go out my last year and wear my favorite number thanks guys appreciate we have group two here in just a minute