Well, after not getting to see much of the team this spring, but seeing Tennessee fans guaranteeing 9-10 wins all over the net, I think it's important to think about how we get there. Now obviously we have some strengths. Our offense scores in bunches, our QB is one of the best in conference, and Tillman has 1st round potential. Our DL might honestly be the best we've had in 15 years, I truly believe that. We're solid at RB, and JWT might be a star. I think we're better at LB than most realize. But OL scares me, and our secondary gives me crushing anxiety. Losing a draft pick on the OL is never great, but add in the fact that most of our periods of offensive ineptitude last year were due to long downs to go caused by holding or false start penalties. Also, even though our rushing numbers were decent, it was more our scheme than our OL moving teams off the ball. Add in new pieces, and that's a recipe that doesn't make me confident. Now for the secondary. To be blunt, Jaylen McCullough and Warren Burrell aren't good enough. Having all of our scholarship corners out for spring was a compound disaster, as Christian Charles could potentially be our best safety, and he's playing CB all spring. We NEED Hadden AND Turnage to step it up, or any team with a passing threat will shred us. We cannot cover man to man. As far as the schedule goes, as with last year, the Pitt game can be a springboard game for us, we win that, 5-0 is almost likely and sets up the biggest TSIO in 30 years. We lose, it'll more than likely be because they tore us up in the secondary. They are the worst of the decent passing games we'll face, but after seeing what Purdue did to us with a gimp and a bunch of nobodies, it would not surprise me if Pitt ran us up and down the field in the passing game. Florida has Richardson and a bunch of dudes. But Napier is that guy, so that game is very much loseable. LSU always has great recievers but Kelly's offense is stale and defense was what made ND relevant the last decade. Kentucky should be better than last year, but they always seem to find a way to lose to us, South Carolina is late and away. I think even having midseason-first-half-of-Texas-game Rattler is an improvement on what they had all year at QB last year, but they were gifted a bowl from Auburn and Florida being dumpster fires late, so is a good Rattler even enough to bring the gap back to us? Mizzou and Candy are auto wins, Mizzou will be atrocious this year without Badie and if Sam Horn isn't a day one starter they're in even bigger trouble. All in all 7-5 again would not shock me with losses to Pitt, UF, Bama, UK, and UGA
The offense could win Tennessee 9 games or the defense could lose Tennessee 5 games. I'm not really worried about anything offensively, especially of Wright and Williams can make Small a rotational guy instead of the guy at RB. I expect another receiver to have a Tillman like turnaround and Hooker is solid. Banks is extremely underrated, he's one of the few players that's been here the past 10 years that could have actually seen the field in Tennessee's heyday. The DBs aren't great but if Young, Baron and Harrison can actually rush the passer consistently that will help them. I really like the interior defensive line, teams aren't going to be able to push them around.
I worry about depending on offense to carry games because it seems like it is inevitable conditions will not always be favorable and qb is a single point of failure in terms of missed playing time changing a season. That being said, when expectations are so low for the secondary it will not be too hard to surpass them. We just need to be average there to win more games than last year.
Georgia showed you can still win a title without being elite at qb, but if you aren’t, you have to be elite pretty much everywhere else. They did it the hard way.
Offense is where the game is at. If we can field a decent attack oriented defense, I feel good about running with the offense. I'm tired of boring, incompetent offenses. Those offenses can only work with elite defense and elite oline. I don't expect to have that very often.
From his interview with the Bussin with the Boys, he seemed pretty positive on the team and acted like they were going to be even more physical and aggressive than last year.
Good to hear. If you are going to play a lot of possessions every game, might as well play aggressive.
I have a fair amount of confidence in the staff and their strategy right now. That confidence has me expecting 8 to 10 wins next year. If we go for 7 or 6 it will be somewhat diminished. And less than that and I am crushed.
But in this transfer/NIL environment, my patience with depth is different than it was a few years ago. One injury changing the season is partly a reflection on their ability to fill those holes.
8 wins minimum, 9 reasonable, 10 stretch. I'm booking losses to Bama and UGA, everything else is potentially winnable.
I see this season playing out about the same as the last one, except the offense should hit the ground running and get us 1 extra win against Pitt. Don’t have enough confidence in the defense to expect any more than that. More important than wins for me, is to finish strong in recruiting with a borderline top 5 class. If we can get some high end talent here we’ll really see what the staff is made of.
