Greene was back on Tennessee’s campus Friday night. He sat out his Powell team’s preseason jamboree against Knoxville’s Bearden High School because of an ankle injury, but the Knoxville Orthopaedic Clinic High School Kick-Off Classic gave him another chance to step inside Neyland Stadium, where he also participated in the Vols’ Night at Neyland Camp on June 4.
He said he’s “not positive” whether he will attend Tennessee’s season opener Sept. 2 against Bowling Green, “but I will for sure be at games” there this year.
“I’ll definitely be there,” Greene said. “I think I am going to go to Cincinnati. I’ll definitely be at UT. As of right now, those are the only schools that have reached out to me or whatever. But I’m sure, as time goes on, other schools will. I may go (other places) depending on what I have going on the day of and that kind of stuff.”
Greene has spent the past five months getting to know Heupel’s staff, including wide receivers coach
Kodi Burns. Now that he’s familiar with the offense Tennessee plans to run under Heupel, he said he expects the Vols to show improvement this season.
“I think they’re going to turn it around this year,” Greene said. “I think they’ll do good this year. Recently, they haven’t been really been doing too great. But they’ve got all these new recruits coming in. They’re throwing the ball more. New coaching staff, different play style — all those kinds of things. I think they’ll do good this year.”
He said he’s excited about Tennessee’s new, fast-paced offense under Heupel “because, as a receiver, you need to go somewhere where they’re going to throw the ball.”
“You don’t need to go somewhere where they’re going to run it,” added Greene, who also attended the Vols’ spring-ending Orange and White Game in April, during the extended NCAA dead period for recruiting that ended May 31. “And UT’s new staff or whatever, their offense they’re running, they’re throwing the ball a lot, so I look into that a lot.”
When he attended the Vols’ camp in early June, he said he enjoyed working with their coaches, although a nagging ankle injury — which he recently re-aggravated — prevented him from playing his best.
“At the time, I was still dealing with an ankle injury, but it (had) recently happened, so I wasn’t able to go to my full potential or whatever,” Greene said. “But I still went out there and worked. They knew I was injured or whatever. When you’re hurt, you can’t go 100, so they can’t really help you too much.
“But they were just helping me out with my footwork, what’ll make me faster, getting me lower. As a taller receiver, you’ve got to bend, get faster — all those kinds of things — so they were just helping me on movement stuff.”
