Tennessee football: Five biggest concerns for Vols 2019 season

4. Limited proven depth at linebacker

Many positions have enough bodies, even if some are unproven, to get things going should there be a rash of injuries. However, at linebacker, Tennessee football has lots of unproven depth and still not as many bodies.

Meanwhile, they don’t even have a couple of starting positions set in stone yet. At this point, all we know is that Darrell Taylor is the outside linebacker, and Daniel Bituli is the inside linebacker. Both guys have superstar potential and may be the best two players on the team given how proven they are. After them, though, there’s nothing.

Inside linebacker suffered a huge blow when Darrin Kirkland Jr. was forced to retire prematurely due to injury. That leaves an opening for Solon Page III, Shanon Reid, Will Ignont, J.J. Peterson, Quavaris Crouch or Henry To’oto’o to work his way into the rotation. However, none of them are proven yet.

At outside linebacker, things are a bigger issue. Deandre Johnson got some experience after Jonathan Kongbo’s season-ending injury last year. Kivon Bennett has garnered practice praise, and despite people waiting on him to step up, Jordan Allen was at least once a four-star junior college transfer. Then there’s Roman Harrison, a four-star commit this year.

But none of those guys are really proven, and as Pruitt said, it’s better to have around eight options at outside linebacker, not five. This is why he said the Vols are on the potential side of things. That applies to linebacker more than anywhere else. The unit could end up being amazing, but for now, there are too many things we don’t know. And that’s a concern.