The back end of Tennessee's 2020 football team could be its top end as well.
Plenty of familiar faces return in the secondary, including position coach and defensive coordinator Derrick Ansley. The Volunteers ranked 16th nationally last season in pass defense, allowing an average of 194.0 yards a game, and they ranked 25th in pass efficiency defense and 23rd in total defense (334.5 yards per game).
"I feel like we'll be a strength of the team because we have the most experience in the back end," senior safety Theo Jackson said. "Most of us have been playing since our freshman year, and we've all built up that camaraderie together. With us being that close and knowing Coach Ansley's playbook, we can be a really good defensive back unit."
Tennessee doesn't have much of a dilemma at cornerback, where juniors Alontae Taylor and Bryce Thompson have combined for a whopping 35 starts the past two seasons.
The safety positions provide more questions of who could play where, but there is not any lack of personnel. Replacing Nigel Warrior is the primary task, with Warrior having amassed 229 tackles, five interceptions and three forced fumbles during his four-year career before signing with the Baltimore Ravens as an undrafted free agent.
Warrior was released by the Ravens on Saturday but signed to their practice squad Sunday.
"Nowadays, the secondary is a lot like basketball," Ansley said. "You want to be able to match up and put different people in different spots to show off their strengths and put people in a position to make plays. We do have a lot of options and a lot of guys who can do different things.
"We've got a lot of guys back from last year outside of Nigel, and we should be deeper in the back end. We need those guys to be the strength of the defense and lean on those guys a lot more this year."
Staff file photo / Derrick Ansley, Tennessee's cornerbacks coach at the time, works on the sideline during the Vols' game against North Carolina State at the Georgia Dome in September 2012.Warrior and Jaylen McCullough ended last season as the starting strong and free safeties, with Shawn Shamburger occupying the "star" position. Jackson and Trevon Flowers are capable of playing either safety spot, with Ansley describing this year's safeties as having more starters than just those who take the field for the first defensive series of a game.
"We moved Trevon from the free safety position to the strong safety just kind of experimenting with that and trying to replace Nigel Warrior's production there, and I think that's a good position for him," Ansley said. "Tank (McCullough) is still playing free safety, and he's also capable of playing the strong and the star. Theo Jackson is rotating in back there, as are Keshawn Lawrence, Cheyenne Labruzza and Tyus Fields.
"We have six or seven guys who are rotating back there, and we're going to need them all. We coach every guy like they're the starters, because you never know when you're going to need that quality depth."
Jackson, a 6-foot-2, 203-pounder from Overton High School in Nashville, enters his final collegiate season having played in 34 career games with six starts, including five last season. He ranked fourth on last year's Vols with 53 tackles, tallying nine against both Brigham Young and Georgia, and he made the first interception of his Vols career at Florida.
He is driven to replace not only some of Warrior's production but his leadership from last season, and he loves the versatility Ansley seeks from each defensive back, as well as the abundance of fellow veterans on this year's team.
"I've played free safety and strong safety, and I'm playing star now," Jackson said. "It's kind of hard to grasp all the information for each position, but I feel comfortable with those. Playing different positions adds value to a player, because at the next level, they look for versatile guys, and Coach Ansley is building that.
"We're all very close, because we all play the left and right safety. We're the quarterbacks of the defense."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.