Tennessee football must follow heart of former three-star recruit John Kelly

On the outside, we think of leadership on a football team as a guy yelling in practice, maybe calling a team meeting or slamming a slacker into a locker.

On the inside, it’s often more subtle than that. Allow Tennessee running backs coach Robert Gillespie to explain. He coaches John Kelly, the Vol with perhaps the best ingredients to lead in 2017 — the Vol who best represents what this team needs to be in 2017.

“He’s allowing himself to be coached really hard, by me,” said Gillespie, who also serves as UT’s assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator. “Which in turn allows me to coach the younger guys. The younger guys have to have an example of how hard you have to work every day. They have to get the example of how to take hard coaching. And by John being the leader in the room, he set the example for the guys of, ‘Hey, this guy has played a lot of snaps, but coach Gillespie continues to be on him hard. Shoot, if John can take it, so can I.’ Those are the small things that not everyone will see. And then of course John has done a great job of pushing himself and working to get better. His energy is contagious, he’s a spark plug to this team, and he’s always kind of had the ability to take the pulse of the team.”

It wasn’t too terribly long ago that “allows self to be coached hard” would not have been on a checklist of leadership qualities. When did that become an option? For the past several years, I’ve heard college coaches use the term “different kind of kid” quite often in describing the challenges of recruiting and disciplining a team.

Blame it all on social media and everyone getting a trophy if you must, but to me the biggest issue is that the money in college athletics has gotten so excessive that it just can’t be the same as it was. Players are increasingly aware that they are disposable cogs, playing for men who make several million dollars a year.

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Lawsuits abound and some day, hopefully, the stars of college football will be able to profit off their names, images and likenesses. In the meantime, they are more self-centered, more likely to transfer, more focused on maximizing their chances of making it to the NFL and tapping into that life-changing money.

The hypocrisy of job-hopping coaches lamenting that mindset is so infuriating it’s almost funny. But NFL executives value selfless servers who care about team — not as much as they value talent, of course — and the successful college coaches find those guys and lean on them to help shape winning locker rooms. The Vols are going to need extraordinary chemistry this season to contend for the SEC East and end speculation on Butch Jones’ job security, and Kelly is the obvious catalyst.

He is what this team wants to be — an underrated overachiever. He was just a three-star recruit out of Oak Park, Mich., in 2015, shunning the opportunity to play defensive back at Michigan State or Michigan so he could run the ball in Knoxville. He’s going to start at running back as a junior and, if the Vols’ plans of being a more physical and NFL-themed offense are executed successfully, he’ll double up on last season’s 630 yards with his ferocious running style.

“Coach Scott is going to give the athletes on this team a chance to showcase their abilities, and I’m going to go out there and lay it on the line for coach Scott,” Kelly said of first-year offensive coordinator Larry Scott. “This is definitely going to be a different offense.”

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And this is a different kind of kid, his well-documented passion for skateboarding a prime example. Kelly came in as a freshman and threw himself into special teams so he could contribute. His enthusiasm on the practice field was eye-opening from the start and has only increased since then. His physicality at 5-foot-9, 205 pounds can startle, but he spent the offseason studying to improve his pass protection and working on his open-field elusiveness.

“I’m not afraid of contact but, I mean, I’d rather not get tackled,” said Kelly, who is at once the tone-setter and barometer for this team.

If it’s a great season for Kelly, carrying the load and taking pressure off a new starting quarterback, it’s more likely a great season for the Vols.

“I’m sure every other team out there is working hard, too,” Kelly said. “But I think we’ve got a special style and swag to our work. We’re about to shock everybody.”

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A lot of guys who were much more heralded recruits than Kelly will have to live up to their profiles and band together for that to happen. Ace recruit Ty Chandler (Montgomery Bell Academy) headlines a trio of freshman running backs. Some might see them as a threat to Kelly’s playing time, but he looks at the little things and the big picture.

“I can see they want to be coached,” he said. “They’re taking it very well.”

Contact Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.