Tennessee defensive linemen work through a drill during practice Tuesday at Haslam Field in Knoxville.KNOXVILLE – Because there is so much Tennessee doesn’t know about its defensive line, there needs to be one thing it can count on from its group of big guys up front in 2018.
“Kyle Phillips, Shy Tuttle, Paul Bain and Alexis Johnson are going to need to play well,” first-year Volunteers head coach Jeremy Pruitt said last week before preseason practices began. “If you look at the teams that have age on them, sometimes it equals success.”
In Sunday’s open practice at Neyland Stadium, it did equal some success for the defense, which managed to consistently pressure quarterbacks Keller Chryst and Jarrett Guarantano.
Bain, Johnson, Phillips and Tuttle are seniors, and three of them were pegged as tackles in Tennessee’s 4-3 defensive front last season, when the Vols finished a dismal 4-8. Now that Pruitt and his 3-4 front are in place, there is technically just one tackle, but that’s not going to stop Tennessee from getting multiple tackle-type bodies onto the field at once to try to stuff opposing running backs.
The more of those veterans Tennessee can cross-train to play any position on the defensive line, the less it will have to rely on the group of relative unknowns comprising the rest of the position group’s depth chart.