Tennessee football: 10 Vols who should redshirt in 2019

Tennessee football’s roster is open for many starting spots, but some people could fall behind. Here are 10 Volunteers who should take a redshirt in 2019.

Even with a ton of returning talent, Tennessee football has lots of openings for playing time on its roster. That’s what happens when you’re coming off a 5-7 season and you lose every starter at the one position where your team was competent.

Add in the fact that they have new coordinators on both sides of the ball and have completely revamped their staff, and it’s pretty clear competition for playing time will last through the beginning of the season. The Vols could look totally different in Jeremy Pruitt’s second year.

However, Tennessee football has more bodies to fill those openings with now thanks to multiple players returning to health and another solid recruiting class. As a result, the competition for playing time remains stiff.

Certain positions are so deep that it’s pretty clear some guys won’t break into the rotation. And that also applies to some upperclassmen. Because of that, there’s a collection of guys who would be advised to take a redshirt this year.

In this post, we’re going to rank the top 10 Vols who should take a redshirt. Some of these guys are newcomers who haven’t arrived yet but are joining a loaded unit. Others were early enrollees who may be battling injury or didn’t do enough in the spring to get into the rotation this year and could use an off-season to get ready to play.

Then we have some sophomores and juniors who could use the redshirt to develop and also have a chance to play given the state of the roster. Finally, there are some seniors whose time is running out and need to redshirt if they ever want a chance at starting.

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to redshirt, and we’ll go into it for each player we name. So let’s go ahead and break them all down. These are 10 Vols who should take a redshirt for the 2019 Tennessee football season.