KNOXVILLE - According to Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt, the Volunteers' defense has a long way to go.
The unit lost a lot from last season, including four linemen and a couple of key backs.
While the defensive line still is being pieced together and linebacker depth is being developed, the secondary will be counted on for much of the leadership.
Which is why it doesn't hurt that the team's most experienced returning defensive player works back there.
Nigel Warrior is a 6-foot, 191-pound senior who has played in 36 of 37 career games and started the last 24 in the defensive backfield, and he became one of the team's captains after his reliability and success in 2018.
The secondary has some other quality players returning, such as fellow senior Baylen Buchanan, juniors Theo Jackson and Shawn Shamburger and sophomores Alontae Taylor and Bryce Thompson. The Vols have some quality true freshmen in Warren Burrell, Jaylen McCollough and Tyus Fields - who hasn't practiced yet due to rehabbing an offseason surgery - but the group needs someone to lead.
Enter Warrior, now in his fourth season.
"It went by pretty fast," he said recently. "I've got some folks coming up to me and asking me for help, so I'm happy for that.
"Being a leader on this team is my responsibility; it's all our responsibility."
There was a lot of shakeup in the coaching staff this offseason, some by Pruitt and some by attrition. Charles Kelly, Warrior's position coach in 2018, left for a position at Alabama and was replaced by Derrick Ansley, who previously was one of the highest-paid defensive backs coach in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders. Ansley came to Knoxville to be not only the secondary coach but also the defensive coordinator.
His pedigree - he had a lot of success coaching defensive backs at Alabama in addition to his NFL experience - has piqued the interest of Warrior, whose father Dale Carter was a Tennessee legend who spent 12 seasons in the NFL.
"He's been a great coach. He's been an excellent coach," Warrior said of Ansley. "He is an excellent coach. He's a great coach, just like the rest of our coaches. Just like all of our coaches, they're good coaches and they treat us like men and they try to teach us how to be men. They're great coaches, every last one of them.
"You've got some great minds coming together on this team with the coaches. I just want to take everything from them, and I want to be better at everything I do."
Although Ansley becomes Warrior's fourth position coach - he was coached by Willie Martinez in 2016 and Charlton Warren in 2017 - he's excited about the opportunity that working with Ansley brings.
"I get to learn from someone else that knows what's going on, somebody else that has experience with coaching and DBs from going into the league and things like that," Warrior said. "He's been around winning programs, so I had a good reaction to it."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.