Tennessee Football: Five Biggest Concerns Post-Spring Practice

1. The Offensive Line is still a work in progress

This showed up as a problem on the football field during the Orange and White game more than anything else. With Joshua Dobbs limited to throwing from the pocket and Quinten Dormady a natural pocket passer anyway, the line was going to be the key to the Vols’ passing game on Saturday.

Well, Dobbs was mediocre despite making plenty of crisp passes, and Dormady was sacked three times. Add in the fact that Jalen Hurd and Alvin Kamara combined averaged fewer than two yards per carry total in the game, and clearly there is still work to do.

Sure, a couple of linemen were out for the spring, but they were going up against an entirely depleted Tennessee defensive line that also did not have it’s top linebacker and leader on defense, Jalen Reeves-Maybin. The offensive line should have been blocking air.

But the loss of Kyler Kerbyson was evident, and there is clearly still work that needs to be done to fill the void he left at blindside tackle.

This is not to say that the line will look the way it did at the beginning of 2014. But there is a chance that it could struggle at times beyond what it should. Butch Jones and Mike DeBord have to know that can’t happen.

But what happened in the spring did not send a good signal when it came to that. The Vols clearly have some work to do in the trenches before the 2016 football season begins.