Ethan Davis cooking up a special second season as part of Tennessee’s ‘big three’ at tight end (2024)

“It wasn’t anything personal, you know what I mean?” Davis said Thursday after Tennessee’s seventh practice of preseason camp. “Like Abes (tight ends coach Alec Abeln) had a conversation with me after the season and he’s like, ‘Alright, E, we’ve got three guys leaving, we need to bring in some guys.’ How I look at it is like, OK, people are always going to bring somebody in who they feel like can be better than you.

“So it’s just a personal thing to me, like OK, I just have to keep working hard and keep grinding, but also bringing those guys along with me, because I’m not going to just shun them out or give them a dirty look because they transferred in. I mean, those are my guys. They’re still my brothers at the end of the day. If they win the job, then they deserve the job, you know what I mean? Because we all work hard at the same time.

“So just having those guys with me now, it’s a blessing at the end of the day because, like our camaraderie is so tight. Like I look at it as like a big three, like one big tight end. You can’t stop anybody, like any of us.”

Davis physically might be the most impressive of the bunch, and it’s not just the sleek No. 0 jersey he’s wearing this season after donning No. 86 as a freshman. The 6-foot-5 tight end is an effortless athlete and natural pass-catcher, proof that you can take the player out of wide receiver but not wide receiver out of the player. His combination of size and movement skills make him a potential mismatch for Josh Heupel and Joey Halzle to utilize in the passing game.

But if you’re going to play tight end in this offense, you have to be able to block, and that’s where Davis had ground to make up. The Vols line their tight ends up all over the field and they have to be versatile and smart. They are used as lead blockers, vital in bread-and-butter split-zone runs and have to take on bigger defenders in the core.

“As a pass-catcher, he’s pretty unique,” Abeln said earlier this month. “He’s really a big slot when he lines up like that and getting him to where he can do the rest of the job, like that’s been the challenge for a year now. And he’s answered the bell in a big way. Still a long way to go, but he’s unique.”

Davis has been willing to embrace the physical side of his position, but had to build his technique from the ground up. He also learned the hard way as a freshman he had to get his body to where he could hold up at the point of attack. Davis weighed between 230 and 235 pounds last season.

“Last year, there was times where I’d get off a block, miss my hands, mess up my feet and I’m back in the backfield, you know what I mean?” he said. “But when you have that extra 15, 20 pounds, I mean, that makes a complete difference to where, OK, yeah I miss my hands, but if my feet are good, then I’m still able to stay in the block and probably re-shoot or something like that.”

There was a sense of pride for Davis to push himself to become the one doing the pushing around.

“I feel like as a man, you don’t ever want to get pushed back in the backfield and lose a rep just based off of strength, you know what I mean?” he said. “So I kind of took it personally as like, OK, like I’m not going to let this happen anymore. It’s not a good feeling, but I know on the other side they’re probably feeling good, so I want that feeling, I want to be the guy on the other side driving them 5, 10 yards off the ball.”

Davis said he is now weighing a “pretty consistent” 245 pounds. The plan for adding weight was not complicated: Davis just ate more – four meals a day instead of three. When he wasn’t getting the calories at Smokey’s, the football complex’s in-house cafeteria, he was cooking meals at home. That came with the added benefit of fostering a new interest after Davis added a culinary arts minor to his communications major.

His favorite thing to cook, Davis shared, is a dish of Cajun chorizo sausage with shrimp, rice and “a little topping.” Cooking for himself is one thing, but he admitted he’s not quite ready to cook big meals for his teammates. Time will tell if Davis brings any chef motifs or cooking references to the Vol Walk or his touchdown celebrations.

The extra meals apparently haven’t slowed Davis’s athleticism.

“Ethan is a different breed,” said Kitselman, who Davis now calls one of his best friends. “Like that dude has put on 12, 13 pounds, 15 pounds maybe, and it’s like he hasn’t lost a step. I’m very jealous, actually.”

Davis put in time with Abeln and David Weeks, the former Fordham tight ends coach and UCF staffer who spent the 2023 season as an analyst for the Vols before Old Dominion hired him as its tight ends coach earlier this offseason, to focus on the technical side of his blocking role. Davis also credited the strength-and-conditioning staff for getting his body-fat percentage where it needed to be and improving his strength in specific areas. He also took the lessons from watching how Warren and Castles went about their business and strained every day.

“Those guys are pros,” Davis said. “They came in the building every single day as pros. The way they worked, the way they handled themselves, the way they carried themselves were like pros. So just being able to see them and their work ethic every single day, I feel like that kind of boosted my freshman year, because I was a young guy in a really old room. I’m watching them and I’m like, OK, this is how you do things in the weight room, you don’t take reps off, you don’t do this, you don’t do that. Being able to learn behind them was a blessing.”

He added: “They emptied their gas tank every single day. It was on E, and then they went into the training room, got everything back right, and then did the same thing the next day, so (it’s) being able to see that, OK, now this is what I have to do in order to play that role that they had.”

Abeln praised Davis early in camp for how much progress he’s made in the mental side of the game, reaching a point where he can “go play free and do the stuff that we all know he’s capable of doing,” in addition to his physical gains.

The rest of Tennessee’s tight end trio took notice, too.

“Ethan took his weight very seriously,” Kitselman said. “In the spring (he) was a little light. Would still have good technique – strong back-side hand and great feet – but whenever you’re light, that can only do so much, and he really took it upon himself to gain some weight. So Ethan has done a great job of getting his weight up, getting stronger in the weight room.

“Then at the same time, like me and Ethan can kind of combo off each other. In high school he was more of a wide receiver guy, so I go to him and ask for help like out in space, and he was like, ‘Hey man, I can’t figure out how to do this in the box,’ and then we just work off each other. He’s done a great job of just feet, hands and just getting his weight up.”

Said Staes: “Ethan’s a baller. Young player, but this fall camp he’s been amazing, just coming in prepared every day, attacking every day, putting forth his best effort. He’s got just natural talent everywhere across the board in what you want at tight end, so he’s a great player.”

Tennessee will hold its first scrimmage of preseason camp on Friday night at Neyland Stadium.