KNOXVILLE – Spirits are high around the Tennessee football program this offseason, which has included signing a recruiting class ranked 12th in the nation and adding assistants with successful track records.
With that kind of momentum, it’s almost as though most forget the Volunteers went 5-7 in 2018, with an average margin of defeat of 25.1 points and six losses by 25 or more points in coach Jeremy Pruitt’s first season. Also apparently overlooked for now is that the program is 55-57 this decade, with the Vols likely to be the only Southeastern Conference team to not win at least 10 games in a single season before it’s over.
The optimism is understandable because everything appears to be trending in the right direction for the Vols under Pruitt.
He has brought in quality players. He pried a successful offensive coodinator (Jim Chaney) from rival Georgia, and he also convinced former Vols quarterback Tee Martin to come back as an offensive position coach. Going into next season, he returns a lot of experience and he has been building the sort of depth a team needs to compete in the talent-rich Southeastern Conference.
In the first of a two-part series taking a position-by-position look at Tennessee’s prospective 2019 roster, the Times Free Press takes a look at the offense.