Tennessee football: 4 safest starting spots on Vols 2018 roster

Tennessee football has a lot of starting spots up for grabs under new head coach Jeremy Pruitt. Here are four Volunteers who are safe, though.

Ever since Jeremy Pruitt took the Tennessee football head coaching job, it became clear that no starter was safe. He’s been very open since the spring on giving everybody an equal amount of reps unless some type of injury is limiting them. And with the Vols switching to a pro-style offense and 3-4 defense, new players are going to emerge.

As a result, it’s pretty hard to find anybody whose starting job is 100 percent safe. Even if they are favorites to win a job, they could have a certain level of competition. And things can definitely happen that shock the world.

But there are some players on this year’s Tennessee football team who have proven just enough to keep a starting job. Pruitt, Kevin Sherrer, Tyson Helton and the position coaches won’t be able to win without these guys, so they have less to worry about.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the only four Vols who are probably completely safe. This post does take into account their performance last year. But that’s not the only thing. In fact, there may be some better players on the team who did not make this list.

We also had to factor in the nature of the depth chart and who is coming up behind them. Many positions have two starters and three players vying for them, so even some of the potentially elite stars aren’t guaranteed starters.

Heck, even special teams is wide open with the departures of Aaron Medley and Trevor Daniel. Simply put, everything related to the Vols is up in the air right now. And given Pruitt’s methods, we have no way of knowing who’s going to emerge just yet.

So with all of these competitions going on now, which spots are safe? Who is certain to be on the field, barring injury, in the season-opener against the West Virginia Mountaineers? Let’s take a look now. These are the four Tennessee football players who likely don’t have to worry about losing their starting spot.