Tennessee football head coach Butch Jones will be under the microscope this year more than at any time during his coaching career.
Every single detail will be scrutinized. If all of his decisions were dissected last season, just imagine how they’ll be taken apart now that he’s got a roster that many early polls around the nation believe can equate to a top-10 program for the Volunteers in 2016.
But obstacles await, and they aren’t just in the forms of the Reptilian Rapscallions who’ve given the Vols so many issues or the Crimson Kings of college football, who also just happen to be UT’s biggest rivals.
There are roster question marks, as well as the puzzle of how the Tennessee players and coaches will react to the national spotlight.
Jones’ recruiting successes will be on full display this season. Not only does he have the leadership of Joshua Dobbs, Cameron Sutton, Jalen Reeves-Maybin, Alvin Kamara, Jalen Hurd, Derek Barnett and others, but he also has a plethora of talent behind those guys.
Tennessee is loaded, and at a recent Big Orange Caravan stop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Jones didn’t shy away from the expectations. But he did note that all the preseason accolades mean little, according to GoVols247’s Wes Rucker:
We’ve worked hard to put ourselves into these conversations, but really they don’t mean anything. Where you’re predicted or your predictions are really based on the performance of last year’s football team—Team 119—and how they finished. Team 120 has not taken one snap yet. We just have to focus on the task at hand.
That task, fair or not, is winning the SEC. As the East division favorites, the Vols won’t sneak up on anybody. They’ve got the roster, they’ve got the fanfare and they’ve added some big-name coaches to the staff. Now, it’s all about following through.
Let’s look at some challenges that will face Jones on the quest to field his best team since arriving in Knoxville.
Everybody is talking about Tennessee right now, so since most of the talent is firmly in place, the biggest question is how the Vols will handle all the attention.
Last year, the answer wasn’t all that great, at least for a while.
Early in 2015, folks were wondering aloud whether UT was for real, and the ABC telecast of much of the first three quarters of what was a thorough thumping of Oklahoma appeared to signify the return of Tennessee to the national picture.
Then came the collapse. The Vols squandered away the lead and lost in overtime to the eventual College Football Playoff participants. The next week, the Vols again played a national-spotlight game against the hated Florida Gators. Again, they blew a lead.
By the time UT pulled off the upset of Georgia, played Alabama to the wire and then reeled off that stretch to close the season, the Vols were an afterthought. Even their domination of Northwestern in the Outback Bowl only eked Tennessee back into the final Top 25 poll.
So the Vols enter the season with a whole bunch of buzz, but how will they handle it? Have the difficult lessons of a season ago matured them enough to face the adversity when it inevitably comes?
That remains to be seen, but there is a certain swagger around the program that hasn’t been there in more than a decade. Not only do the players believe, but the coaches do. And nobody is shy about vocalizing his thoughts.
Jalen Hurd took offense to Florida cornerback Jalen Tabor’s denouncement of Tennessee on social media, so the Vols running back defended his school on his own Twitter account (via CollegeSpun’s Matt Lombardi).
New defensive coordinator Bob Shoop isn’t mincing words, either. He told Knoxville’s WNML radio host Jimmy Hyams about his defense, “We’re very committed. We’re going to stop the run. Nobody will run the football on the Orange Swarm. Nobody will run the football on Tennessee.”
It looks like Tennessee doesn’t mind the media attention at all. But the loudest talking is done in the win column.
Tennessee redshirt junior running back Alvin Kamara had the opportunity to bypass his final two seasons in Knoxville and head to the NFL, but he didn’t return to play Robin to Hurd’s Batman.
Jones must find a way to divvy up the offensive touches between the two dynamic stars.
Hurd is a rugged player who will go down as one of the program’s all-time greats. He may be pigeonholed as the every-down, grind-it-out runner, but that’s not quite fair; he can make big things happen, too. It’s just that next to Kamara’s electrifying ability, anybody would look like a regular runner.
That’s why Jones has to get Kamara the football as much as possible. He’s special. His ability to turn short-yardage passes and bottled-up runs into big gains is the kind of playmaking dynamic the Vols don’t have a lot of on offense. Last year, he averaged 7.3 yards per touch and scored 11 touchdowns.
Not only is he exceptional on the field, but he’s also a leader who was voted this spring as a permanent captain. Jones told the Chattanooga Times Free Press‘ Patrick Brown just how much he means to the Vols:
He’s been great for the locker room because he’s been at a couple programs. He can kind of give guidance. These players just think one way because they’ve only been in one program. A lot of times he’s kind of the voice that says, ‘Hey, you guys have it pretty special here. You better understand that.’ Our players, they respect him.
But you don’t feed Kamara the ball because he’s a nice guy. You do it because getting him the ball gives the Vols the best chance to win. While you can’t really limit touches for a star like Hurd, there should be more plays to pass around.
If Tennessee moves more chains, sustains more drives and scores more touchdowns this season, that won’t be an issue. Considering Dobbs’ struggles in the downfield passing game, there’s no reason why Kamara shouldn’t catch 30 short passes. He also needs to get the handoff a lot and return punts.
Kamara isn’t some niche back on this level or on the next. He’s a 5’10”, 215-pound, do-it-all offensive star. He’s Kenyan Drake without the injuries.
Offensive coordinator Mike DeBord has to draw up creative ways to let him help Tennessee win football games. Last year was a good start, but this season the spotlight has to be wide enough to shine on Kamara and Hurd equally.
No position has been as consistently poor during Jones’ tenure as the wide receiving corps.
That may sound harsh, but the proof is in the statistics. Only one Vols receiver has surpassed 500 yards through the air in the three years that Jones has been in Knoxville, and that was Pig Howard’s 618 in 2014.
The receivers have been ineffective and inefficient. Part of the reason for that, of course, is inaccuracy from UT’s quarterbacks. Prior to Dobbs’ passing struggles, Justin Worley wasn’t conjuring up any Peyton Manning comparisons, either.
Now that the Vols have revamped the receiving corps, passing game coordinator Zach Azzanni hopes to be able to parlay the new talent into a new era in which the Vols throw the ball with some success.
Preston Williams emerged this spring as a rising star. He made the list of ESPN.com reporter Travis Haney‘s 10 biggest breakout guys of the spring, saying he had a “head-turning” performance over the course of UT’s 15 practices.
He’ll team with junior Josh Malone to give the Vols a potentially formidable one-two punch. Junior Josh Smith hasn’t exactly had a consistent career, but he has the ability to be a steady weapon for the Vols on offense. Though Jauan Jennings isn’t healthy right now, he has the physicality UT needs on the outside.
JUCO transfer Jeff George did some nice things in his spring debut, and a freshman quintet of Marquez Callaway, Tyler Byrd, Latrell Williams, Brandon Johnson and Corey Henderson could revitalize a corps in need of a facelift.
Of course, not all those guys are going to fit into the picture, especially considering Tennessee will have two tight ends on the field at times, veterans Ethan Wolf and Jason Croom. So who’s going to outfit the group?
The Vols have to find four or five receivers Dobbs can rely on, and he needs to get with them over the summer and develop the kind of rapport that is going to manifest itself as in-game success once the season starts.
There’s no way UT can be as one-dimensional as it was a season ago and expect to win the biggest of the big games. If the Vols are going to compete for championships, they have to elevate the passing game to a level it hasn’t risen to in Jones’ tenure on Rocky Top.
Tennessee’s tackle situation on both sides of the ball is kind of like those Algebra books you had back in eighth grade where all the answers are in the back of the book, but the teacher still makes you show your work.
The Vols have all the answers in the form of a bunch of quality prospects and players who have massive potential. They’ve just got to get those in-game reps to break through for the Vols to finish at the top of their class.
On offense, sophomore Chance Hall and redshirt freshman Drew Richmond are expected to hold down the right and left tackle jobs, respectively, but that’s certainly not set in stone. Redshirt junior Brett Kendrick had a strong spring and has starting experience as well.
While the Vols’ trio of incoming freshmen tackles—Marcus Tatum, Ryan Johnson and Nathan Niehaus—likely won’t be quite ready to be thrown immediately into the fray, Jones could shift a guard like Jashon Robertson or Jack Jones outside if there’s spotty play.
This new Vols regime of coaches have done a great job rebuilding Tennessee’s depth from basically the bottom of the barrel under Derek Dooley, but offensive tackle just isn’t quite there yet. Will that be a major issue this year? It’s certainly worth watching.
On the other side of the ball, it’s much the same story.
Everybody knows the kind of hype that surrounded Kahlil McKenzie and Shy Tuttle out of high school, and both looked really good at times last year. But Tuttle endured a season-ending injury against Georgia and isn’t healthy yet. McKenzie showed flashes but must get in better shape.
Beyond those two, upperclassmen Danny O’Brien and Kendal Vickers are solid players, and sophomore Quay Picou could provide some snaps, too. But you normally need more than four or five defensive tackles to get through the rigors of an SEC schedule, so the Vols need to identify another player or two at the position.
All will be fine if the Vols can stay healthy and those players live up to their high school billings, but there are no guarantees.
The Vols have some options at each of those positions on both sides of the ball, but depth is tenuous at best. Some players either need to move positions or emerge and prove they can help.
It’s going to have all the drama, twists, turns, emotion, intrigue, psychological hurdles and physical ones you could ever want in entertainment.
No, it isn’t the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster.
Instead, it’s Tennessee’s four-game stretch that bookends home tilts against Florida and Alabama with road trips to Georgia and Texas A&M sandwiched in between. Also, this grueling stretch of games falls at the end of seven consecutive weeks of playing before the post-‘Bama bye, too.
The Vols could conceivably get through the early season unscathed if they beat Virginia Tech in Bristol. But that four-game stretch will make or break Tennessee’s championship hopes.
It all starts with Florida, a game that Jones must prove he can win after three near-misses in each of his first three years in Knoxville. Last September, as every Vols fan already knows, UT’s coaching staff flat-out blew the game in Gainesville, leading to an 11th straight loss against the hated Gators.
Back in Knoxville in ’16, that simply can’t happen again.
Tennessee has the on-field-talent advantage and has to exorcise those reptilian demons. This has to be the year that materializes in a win.
The next week, UT travels to Athens, Georgia, to take on a Bulldogs team that blew one of its own against the Vols in Knoxville last year. With new coach Kirby Smart and plenty of talent, that game is anything but a gimme.
Then there’s a long trip to College Station to take on a Texas A&M team loaded with talent but with plenty of question marks of its own, a game that could be overlooked with Alabama coming to Knoxville the next week.
Appropriately, the stretch ends with the rival Crimson Tide. As the cliche goes, to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best, and UA is the defending national champion. Winning that game would also see the Vols seize the SEC spotlight from Nick Saban‘s team.
If the Vols can make it through that run of games, their sights will be set on even bigger things than the SEC title. But that’s a massive if. It just happens to be the biggest challenge facing Jones this year.
All quotes and information gathered firsthand unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information gathered from 247Sports unless otherwise noted. All stats gathered at CFBStats.com unless otherwise noted.
Brad Shepard covers SEC football and is the Tennessee lead writer for Bleacher Report. Follow Brad on Twitter @Brad_Shepard.