SEC Preview: Should we continue to get excited about Tennessee?

Tennessee had one hell of a year in 2023.

There was two sides. There was the amazing win over Alabama, which will live long into the memory. I think my house is still reverberating from the noise at Neyland, and I live nowhere near the place.

The other side was the laughable loss on the road to Georgia and the “What in the hell happened there?” monstrosity that was South Carolina on the road, where Spencer Rattler finally looked like a great quarterback and Tennessee’s defense was actually what we thought it was (ie bad all season long).

There is no doubt about it: Weapons have gone from the team, but it’s OK to still believe in the Vols this year. Right??

WHO’S ARRIVED

Tennessee has had an excellent transfer portal, grabbing WR Dant’e Thornton (Oregon), as well as John Campbell from Miami who’ll help shore up an already-good O-Line.

CB Gabe Jeudy-Lally’s coming in as a grad transfer, and they’ve brought in a lot of depth all over.

5-star Daevin Hobbs, who’s a 6-3, 270lb strongside defensive end. He’ll start, but probably at the back end of the season (he was out for fall practice after getting shoulder surgery), and if Joe Milton III’s atrocious, people will be talking an awful lot about ‘Nico’. That’s Nico Iamaleava, whom Tennessee spent $8m on to get him to come to Knoxville.

 

WHO’S GONE

There is no doubt that Tennessee’s going to miss its star quarterback, Hendon Hooker. Hooker was a Heisman Candidate in 2022, doing everything with his arm (3,135 yards, 27 TDs, 2 INTs) and his legs (430 yards, 2 TDs), as well as the scrambling to give himself the room to make the jaw-dropping throws into the bucket hands of Jalin Hyatt, who was one of the best wide receivers in the country (1,267 yards, 15 TDs). Oh, and Hyatt’s gone too. Cedric Tillman, who spent a lot of the season out too but still contributed over 400 yards, is gone too.

From the staff, the team’s certainly going to miss OC Alex Golesh, who was the architect of that offense. He’s now USF’s head coach.

DT Dajohn Terry’s also off to Oklahoma.

OFFENSE

As we mentioned earlier, the offense are going to miss a ton of weapons. That means that Joe Milton III is going to have to be the Joe Milton people expected when he came to Michigan as a freshman, but instead was – to put it kindly – unreliable. So now he’s the starter and Tennessee, everyone’s excited. He’s got track speed and a great arm. The problem is is that he could overthrow Usain Bolt, or throw softly to the sideline and send a sorority girl into the hospital with a broken nose. People are going to expect a lot after the 251 yard, 3 TD performance against Clemson, but I’m not quite so sure.

But if he does connect to the receivers properly, he’ll do some damage. Bru McCoy, Ramel Keyton, Squirrel White and Thornton are going to going to give secondaries terrors.

Oh, and the run game should hold up nicely too, with Jaylen Wright (875 yards, 10 TDs), Jabari Small and Dylan Sampson all coming back.

The offensive line should be fine if unspectacular. Milton should have the wheels to avoid a real beating back there, if his decision-making doesn’t live him the pocket, wondering when he’s going to eat turf.

DEFENSE

Tennessee’s defense was very poor last year (92 in the country is yards/game given up). And we’re being polite about that.

The loss of Dajohn Terry’s going to be a pain, but top tackler (and its best secondary players) Aaron Beasley (76 tackles, 3 sacks FROM THE CORNERBACK POSITION) is back.

We’ll be interested to see what Grad Transfer LB Kennan Pili can do after a good enough career at BYU, who’s already a 25 year-old husband, father, and has played 34 games in his college career.

But if Tennessee continues to be as laughably awful against the pass (126th in the country, but still not the worst in the SEC (Arkansas was 130th, beating Ohio by 1.1 yards), then the Vols are in trouble. Jeudy-Lally, Beasley and Jaydon McCullough will be required not to do anything asinine.

PREDICTION

Virginia (in Nashville) – W
Austin Peay – W
at Florida – W
UTSA – W
South Carolina – W
Texas A&M – W
at Alabama – L
at Kentucky – L
UConn – W
at Missouri – W
Georgia – L
Vanderbilt – W

PREDICTION: 9-3 Tennessee’s due to lose a clunker this year, and we think it’ll be at Kentucky (although Missouri’s going to be an absolute war, too). That’s because they are facing a really good quarterback (the losses to Alabama and Georgia are expected).

But the X-Factor is Milton III. If he’s mistake-prone and fumbles the ball a lot, then Vols will lose their temper. And with Florida coming Week 3 (we think they beat Virginia pretty easy and Austin Peavy very, very easily), he’d better tune up well. Tennessee’s team is good, but it’s not going to be SEC East-win amazing.