Tennessee football stock report after Week 5: Vols front seven rising

Stock down

Tyson Helton’s play-calling

There have been concerns with this before, but Saturday was the worst. Tyson Helton said he wanted Tennessee football’s offense to use physical runs that then establish the deep ball. He went away from that on the first drive Saturday. And that’s one of many times he’s deviated from the plan throughout the year. Yes, personnel has messed things up a bit, but against a Georgia team that has struggled against teams that stick to the run, Helton messed up last weekend.

On the first play of the game, Ty Chandler ran for a first down. Then Helton called three straight short passing plays, and the Vols got stopped. That was the theme of the day, as he relied on far too many horizontal plays and completely went away from what the Vols do best. As a result, we had to knock Helton overall. His play-calling was a huge reason that UT did not cross midfield until late in the second half.

Tight ends

The Vols have not been using the tight ends as much as we thought they would at the beginning of the season, at least in the passing game. That was already a major red flag, but with Dominick Wood-Anderson getting the bulk of the action Saturday, another one arose.

Tight end blocking, which Jeremy Pruitt and Tyson Helton clearly love, is still an issue. Wood-Anderson got abused on far too many plays from rushers coming around the outside, and it partially limited what Jarrett Guarantano could do. We have no way of knowing what’s going to happen here, but for now, this unit has a ton of work to do.