Raiders' Pete Carroll made a comment to Dont'e Thornton on draft day that won't help Tennessee's reputation with wide receivers

One of the biggest questions surrounding Tennessee Vols wide receiver Dont'e Thornton in the 2025 NFL Draft was whether he could run pro-style routes due to the unique offense he played in at UT. 

Thornton, who spent the first two seasons of his career at Oregon before transferring to Tennessee, noted at the Vols' Pro Day earlier this spring that NFL teams had cocnerns about his ability to run pro-style routes. 

"That was mostly every team's main talking point was asking with the offense that we run here at Tennessee if I'm able to run those pro-style routes....I had to be very intentional, playing two seasons here at Tennessee, we don't have the same wide route tree that most pro-style offenses have," said Thornton. 

After getting selected by the Las Vegas Raiders in the fourth round of the draft, Thornton told reporters that he didn't have the opportunity at Tennessee over the last two seasons to showcase his route running abilities. 

"I'd say just my intermediate and medium route running," said Thornton on draft day when asked what he wants to improve on. "With my past two years (at Tennessee), I haven't really had the opportunity to really display that as much. So just getting back into the flow of doing that. I'd say that was the No. 1 thing everybody was saying." 

One of the reasons that Raiders head coach Pete Carroll was comfortable selecting Thornton in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft was because of his Oregon film in 2021 and 2022. 

"One thing on draft day, when I talked to Coach Pete Carroll, he said it himself, if you look at the Oregon film, there's a lot of stuff you can see that people didn't see with these last two years with me playing at Tennessee," said Thornton during an appearance on OLV Raiders Network. "If you turn on my two years of Oregon film, you'll see me running true routes. 

"But I just take it as a challenge. I'm not going to say I'm the best route runner in the world -- there's definitely stuff I've got to work on."