It is difficult to determine just what Tennessee accomplished in its 59-3 win over ETSU on Saturday. How much did the Vols improve considering the level of competition they were playing? Clearly, the Buccaneers weren’t nearly the same caliber of their counterparts, despite UT’s recent struggles.

Here I visited with former UT safety Fred White about just what he saw in a dominating performance against ETSU, which evened the Vols record at 1-1:

Dave Hooker: How uplifting is it for a team to get a win no matter the opponent?

Fred White: It feels a lot different after a win. Anytime you can get a win under your belt, it’s a great thing. For these young kids on this football team and this coaching staff to just feel a win helps. Our football team right now, we can’t look down on anyone because we’re not a ranked football team and not a lot of people expect a lot of things out of our football team at the moment except for the guys in that locker room and on that coaching staff. For them to get a win, but to get it in the (dominating) fashion they did it in, it was great. It gives them a chance to see success and themselves actually beating someone. It goes a long way.

Dave: How important was the blocked punt by Marquill Osborne, who had played in 20 games before the ETSU game? UT coach Jeremy Pruitt said players would be expected to play on special teams even if they were on the two-deep. Osborne accepted that challenge and it worked for a team that will need to manufacture points throughout the season.

Fred: It sure did. I think those guys got a chance to see that they have to find ways to help this team win. If I want to play for myself, I need to go out here and get some things done to help this team win and show I can make plays because I’m a playmaker. You’ll see the same thing next week as well because we’re going to need those guys to come up and win for us and play big for us. Every aspect of the game needs to be covered and every aspect of the game, we need to win. That’s offense, defense and special teams. Hopefully our guys can see the light and we can move forward from there.

Dave: What did you think were some the bright spots from Saturday’s game?

Fred: You have a young playmaker in No. 20 (Bryce Thompson). He got an interception. He played pretty good in the game and made some plays for us. I saw a bright spot in our secondary. I saw some bright spots with our receivers. (Marquez) Callaway did a pretty good job. Also (Josh) Palmer came on.

Those guys are going to need to continue to get better and show improvement. There were some positions I didn’t feel so comfortable about. That offensive line is starting to play better, but it’s still a concern at the moment. We couldn’t move the ball against East Tennessee State in the first half. In the second half it got better. Those guys started to move the ball a little bit better.

Dave: What did you think of freshman running back Jeremy Banks, who had 62 yards and 2 touchdown on 13 carries?

Fred: I like Jeremy Banks. I thought he did a really good job of finding the hole, running physical and running behind his pads. Now, we were playing against East Tennessee State. We have one more game (against UTEP) that’s very similar to what we just got done playing to shore up all the mistakes we made. I do think there’s a certain group of guys on the offensive line (who) helped our production in the run game. I think those things could help us in the future, just finding the right combination of guys to play together against whatever defense we’re playing against. Going forward we need to find ways to run the ball against any front to open up the play-action pass. As you can tell, whenever (quarterback Jarrett) Guarantano has time, he can find the right receiver.

Dave: How important was it to get backup quarterback Keller Chryst some snaps because of UT’s problems in pass protection?

Fred: That’s my concern. I look at our offensive line and we’ve had too many plays where we’ve had people come right up the middle. Literally, right in the A-gap on either side of the center. They’ve come through and made tackles on our quarterback in both games.

That’s something we need to shore up and try to figure out how to get those guys blocked in there. If you continue to do things like that … when you play Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Auburn and South Carolina, that is the meat of your schedule. That is SEC football.

The football were playing right now, even against West Virginia, is not the same. Those (SEC) guys play a little bit harder, they run a little bit faster and they’re going to try to intimidate you. We haven’t seen that yet. Playing Keller Chryst … you never know if we can make it through an entire season with our quarterback upright. We need both of those guys to be ready.