Tennessee football: 5 toughest Vols to replace for 2019

Tennessee football didn’t lose a ton of talent from 2018, but Jeremy Pruitt lost key guys. Here are the five toughest Volunteers to replace.

The best thing working for Tennessee football is the level of production they return. In 2018, the Vols had a ton of young talent starting everywhere, and they were all learning new systems on both sides of the ball.

Heading into this season, lots of that young talent comes back, and Jeremy Pruitt has a new recruiting class and easier schedule to add to that. However, that doesn’t mean that the Vols don’t lose key players.

As always, there are important players who leave, and Tennessee football lost minimal but key talent last year. In fact, despite all the returning talent, their best and most important players have all graduated. You’ll notice that here.

In this post, we’re going to rank the five players who will be toughest for the Vols to replace. These always include players who graduated or left early for the professional ranks. That means this year, only graduated players will be on the list.

Only one player left early for the NFL, Quart’e Sapp, and he left because of issues on Rocky Top anyway, so we can’t say he’s a guy the Vols will miss. All the other players who have left or may leave are transferring out, and they struggled in the system last year and might even play less this year. We’re also leaving out players up in the air due to injury like Trey Smith.

As a result, it became pretty easy not to go over five guys given the low numbers of veterans on the team last year. However, as you’ll see, the players we name were some of the most recognizable on the team. So it’s a bit of give and take.

UT does not beat the Auburn Tigers or Kentucky Wildcats without these guys, which means Pruitt still has work to do. Let’s go ahead and name who we’re talking about. These are the five players Tennessee football will miss the most in 2019.