Like a ship in a fog bank, Butch Jones can sometimes sail in such an impenetrable cloud of coaching cliches that it's impossible to determine whether he's sailing smoothly or sinking.
The Tennessee coach didn't deviate far off-course on Tuesday at SEC Media Days, sprinkling his team preview with plenty of "building a foundation for the future" or "leaders eat last" sprinkled into his comments. At one point, he said that his team "hasn't looked up (and) hasn't blinked," which could mean that the Vols are intensely focused or could mean that rigor mortis has set in.
There were a few glimpses, even though Jones was more restrained in his rhetoric than in some years where he has graced the podium with all the personality of Siri answering questions about longitude and latitude.