Tennessee Volunteers Football: RB Marlin Lane’s Return Date Unknown & Other Spring Notes

Oct 20, 2012; Knoxville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers running back Marlin Lane (15) runs with the ball against the Alabama Crimson Tide during the second half at Neyland Stadium. Alabama won by a score of 44 to 13. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

Running back Marlin Lane, who missed time at practice last week due to a family illness, was conspicuously absent again from practice yesterday.

When pressed for the details of Lane’s absence, and a reason for his absence, the Volunteer’s assistant coaches offered very little.

"Offensive Coordinator Mike Bajakian on when Lane will return: That’s up to Coach Jones Running back coach Robert Gillespie: I’m focused on coaching the players who are here"

Hopefully Lane’s absence will be explained soon and it’s nothing major. Last season the Junior tailback showed flashes of what kind of running back he’s capable of being.  Against Troy, Lane rushed for 132 yards on 19 carries. Two weeks later against Vanderbilt Lane had 108 yards on 16 carries. The Daytona Beach native averaged 5.5 yards a carry last season. 

Notes & Quotes

• The Vols currently have only four healthy receivers — Devrin Young, Pig Howard, Cody Blanc and Drae Bowles.
• Former Vols at practice # 11 included: DeRon Jenkins, Carl Johnson, Doug Matthews, Charlie Morgan, Mike Price, Jayson Swain and Chris Treece.
• Vol WR coach Zach Azzani is continuing to look for a leader to step from the WR group

"Zach Azzani: I’m disappointed in some of the progress we’ve made. We take two steps forward, take a step back. Then the injuries haven’t helped. I haven’t been able to settle a guy into a position. This guy is down, so I have to move this guy over here. John Jancek: Our four down pass rush has to get better. We don’t have a tremendous edge presence right now. When we blitz I think we are doing some good things, but you can’t do that all the time. You have to be able to play coverage on third down and hopefully impact the quarterback with your front four. That is where we are pretty predictable right now Mike Bajakian: We have been building each practice, going back to Saturday’s scrimmage, we had momentum early in the scrimmage, we lost momentum and then we didn’t have anyone step up and take it back. Today, I felt we had some guys make plays in critical situations that gave us momentum. Mike Bajakian: Depth across the board is always an issue. We always tell the receivers, the tailbacks, the running backs, we tell all positions in the pass game that they paint the picture for the quarterback. Everything is about timing. Everything is about spacing"

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