Where do the Tennessee Vols need improvement the most?

As the Tennessee Volunteers prepare to open up fall camp this week, where do they need to show the most improvement?

After the 2017 season, it’s no question that the Tennessee Volunteers need to show some major improvement on both sides of the ball.  Especially if they expect to win any games of significance.  But which side of the ball needs to improve more?

Let’s start out by taking a look at last year’s defense.  On average, the Vols gave up a total of 412.9 yards per game.  If you break that down by category, they gave up 161.67 passing yards per game and 251.3 rushing yards per game.

The only bright spot about last year’s defense was the secondary, but if you look at those numbers, opponents only attempted to pass on the Vols 279 times.  Compare that to 555 rushing attempts and you can see why the secondary numbers might be a little skewed.

Needless to say, the defense left much to be desired.  Teams ran the ball constantly because there was never any fear they were going to be stopped.

As bad as those numbers are, now we have to look at the offensive side of the ball.  Surely they couldn’t be any worse, right?

In 2017, the Vols gained a total of 3,493 yards.  That comes out to be 2,084 passing yards and 1,409 rushing yards.

Stay with me now, it only gets better.  When you break that down by game, it comes out to be 173.67 yards per game through the air and a massive 117.4 yards per game on the game. Put all that together, the Vols offense averaged 291.1 yards/game.

When you look at those numbers, it’s pretty hard to decide which side of the ball needs to improve more.  On one hand, you have an offensive line that was obliterated by injuries and by the end of the season, they were down to the third-string quarterback.  Combine that with an inept coaching staff and boneheaded play calling and you have a recipe for disaster.

On the defensive side of the ball, it was a bit of a different story.  Sure there were some injuries, but not nearly as many as the offense.  Most times it just seemed like they couldn’t stop anyone.

Which raises another question: Was the defense that bad or once again, was it a lack of coaching?

Going back to the original question: Which side of the ball needs to improve the most?  Well, truth be told, I really don’t know.  However, since the question was asked, I would say defense.  Reason being, if the defense can’t stop anything they won’t give the offense much of a chance, regardless of how good they are.  Eventually, a bad defense will come back to bite you and you will lose a close game that you should win every time.

With Jeremy Pruitt as the head coach now, we can fully expect to see some improvements on the Tennessee Volunteers’ defense.  Obviously, the offense needs to improve as well but it has to start with the defense.  If Pruitt and company can live up to the hype and get this team to buy in, they may just surprise some people this season.  I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.