Tennessee lost its top two running backs to the transfer portal in the wake of the coaching transition this offseason.
Eric Gray, the Vols’ leading-rusher last season with 772 yards and four touchdowns, elected to transfer to Oklahoma, while Ty Chandler transferred to North Carolina, respectively, after rushing for 456 yards and four touchdowns.
That leaves Jabari Small as Tennessee’s leading-returner rusher heading into Josh Heupel’s first season on Rocky Top. Under new leadership, the sophomore back understands he has to kick things into another gear.
‘I’ve got to do something different, step up, change the way I act,” Small explained to the media earlier in fall camp. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I had to grow up pretty fast, but I feel like it helped me kind of just mature, like, ‘Well, somebody’s got to step up, and I want it to be me.’ It definitely changed the way I thought about it.”
Stepping up as a leader is what Tennessee’s new coaching staff has preached to Small in the handful of months they’ve been in Knoxville. Running backs coach Jerry Mack took spring to evaluate the potential leaders he had in his room, and he walked away feeling great about what he had inherited in Small.
“(Small is) a young guy, but we feel like he has the skill set and he has some of the attributes that we look for in leadership,” Mack recently told the media. “One thing about Jabari is he’s really taken heed to studying more in the offseason.”
That studying has paid off in a big way for Small. After rushing for just 117 yards on 26 carries as a true freshman last season in 10 games, he’s emerged as Tennessee’s top back heading into his second year.
“When you look at where he was when he came in, in the spring, we evaluated him in the spring and we had those conversations with him — what he needs to build on and what he needs to grow with,” Mack said. “And one of those things was, ‘Hey, we need you to be more of a leader, and we also need for you to make sure that you study different running backs in the (NFL) and at the college level to make sure that you’re on point in what you’re trying to do.’ And that’s what I’ve seen.
“I’ve seen that turn over to (the) game, as far as when we get on the field, you can see that he has a better understanding of what we’re trying to do. And that just comes from film study. That comes from understanding what we’re trying to teach him. It comes from him studying the game. And he has a great background, great lineage as far as a lot of his family members played at a really, really high level.”
High expectations have followed Small as he’s burst on the scene within the program.
Along with the buzz he’s generated behind closed doors, the 5-foot-9 Memphis native has begun to be recognized nationally, being named recently to the Doak Walker Preseason Watch List, which is awarded annually to the nation’s top running back.
“I’ve been really pleased with his maturity and what he’s been able to bring to that room overall — more of a leader by example,” Mack said. “He’s not a rah-rah guy. He doesn’t talk a whole lot. But you just watch the way he goes about carrying on his business, you can tell that other guys are picking up some of those traits.”
Small comes from a great lineage of football players. His father, Eddie, played wide receiver at Ole Miss from 1990-93, while his uncle, Tony Small, was an All-SEC wide receiver for Georgia from 1996-98. His other uncle, O.J. Small, was an All-SEC wide receiver at Florida from 2000-04 before playing in the NFL.
“We left spring saying Jabari is definitely a guy that we can count on and we can trust,” Offensive coordinator Alex Golesh said at the beginning of fall camp. “He’s still young, still hasn't had a whole lot of time, but really proved that he understood what we were trying to do. Not a complete finished product, but understood what we were trying to do.
“I think attitude, effort and toughness, all those things embody what Jabari is.”
Tennessee opens its season against Bowling Green two weeks from Thursday on Sept. 2 at 8 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.
