With athletics director Dave Hart looking on, the Butch Jones era kicked off its first fall camp Friday afternoon in the first day of the NCAA's mandated acclimation period.

On Wednesday at his pre-camp press conference, Jones said he was excited and curious to see what his team's retention was from spring practice.

"That's what I'm excited to see and I think the big thing as we continue to move forward is retention," Jones said. "We cannot start from ground zero, we have to take what worked to build upon with those 15 practices of spring football, and continue to progress. We can't be starting back. We have to continue to move forward, and also individuals taking pride in their performance, our style of play."

As an observer, the Vols looked like they had retained things well as the offensive line immediately jumped into blitz pick-up drills in scheme work and not just one on one work. In the passing game, the quarterbacks immediately went into progression reads throwing to stationary receivers as offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian called out the coverage and the quarterbacks responded by throwing to the right read.

There was plenty of attention to detail on the fundamentals with ball security and such. Of course, plenty of eyes were on the quarterbacks and both freshman signal callers Joshua Dobbs and Riley Ferguson showed nice accuracy overall.

As for the receivers, the receivers appeared to catch the ball better, but receivers coach Zach Azzanni wasn't giving any of the returning players a pass on anything while he was extremely patient with the freshman receivers noting to them that it was a learning process on how to do things his way on the practice field.

Tight end Woody Quinn was a popular name called out by Jones on the microphone as the head coach challenged his junior college tight end. Quinn looked to get off to a slow start, but ramped it up catching the ball better as practice progressed and showing athleticism.

Overall the freshman class looked the part as the young offensive linemen looked good from a stature standpoint, but the proof for them comes when pads come on. No freshman looks the part more than receiver Marquez North who's physical frame jumps out immediately in the receiver group.

Defensively, tackle Mo Couch went through his first full Jones practice after being limited in the spring coming off shoulder surgery in the winter as did freshman safety Jalen Reeves-Maybin. There's plenty of curiosity about Justin King and his move to linebacker but that will have to wait as King didn't practice with the team doing rehab exercises in a roped off area that Jones calls the hole.

Fellow linebacker Curt Maggitt was sporting a knee brace but appeared to go through every drill that the media was allowed to see.