Sophomore-to-be defensive end Austin Smith will miss the rest of spring practice with a shoulder injury, Tennessee coach Butch Jones said Tuesday night.

A former outside linebacker who moved to defensive end after last season, Smith had been enjoying a successful spring until going down sometime last week with the injury.

“He’ll be lost for the rest of the spring. We’ll get him back in June,” Jones said after Tuesday’s practice on Haslam Field. “It’s a shoulder.”

Smith joins a growing list of Tennessee players the past couple of years to suffer significant shoulder injuries, but Jones insisted programs across the country are having similar issues.

“Yeah, we’re looking at that,” Jones said. “We’ve looked around the country, and really every school we’ve talked to is having the same issues. A lot of times I think it stems from … the change of football. It’s more of a lateral game now. It’s a sideline-to-sideline game with all the spread offenses, so you have to cover more territory. And a lot of times, it gets back to the body position of reaching and lunging and not putting your feet in the proper position.

“It’s just like every year. We research the trends in all of college football and even high school football, and that’s a trend that everyone is suffering from, those (shoulder) injuries.

“We’ve really revamped our strength and conditioning program, too, to make sure we’re doing as much injury prevention with those certain types of muscle groups, as well.”

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Jones said junior offensive lineman Austin Sanders’ sprained ankle was the only other significant injury from last week, but he said he anticipated Sanders returning to the field Thursday.

“Most of the injuries were postseason injuries,” Jones said. “We’ve had —Â knock on wood — very few this spring. But not really. Just bumps and bruises here and there. We’ve had some illness going around, so we’ve had individuals (sick). Justin Martin didn’t practice on Saturday. He had some illness. He wasn’t out here today, either. He has the flu.

“Some bumps and bruises that way.”

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