Tennessee football: Vols top five sophomores for 2019

Jeremy Pruitt’s first season with Tennessee football saw lots of freshmen step up. Here are those top Volunteers sophomores for 2019.

One of the most exciting parts about any season under first-year head coach is looking at what the freshmen do. It’s only more exciting to wait and see what the standouts will do as sophomores. Tennessee football has a few such players entering Jeremy Pruitt’s second year.

It’s one thing to be very good your first year at a certain level. However, maintaining it a second year is even harder after coaches have had a year to study you. That’s the case in college as much as it is in the NFL.

Because of a light 2018 recruiting class when it came to the players he wanted, Pruitt did not throw as many freshmen to the wolves last year as is usually the case for a first-year head coach. But Tennessee football still had enough standout stars who will be looking to build on that as sophomores this year.

Can they do it? Well, first we have to find out who those players are if we’re going to analyze what they may or may not be able to do. In this post, we’ll be taking a look at the sophomores likely to have the biggest impact on the Vols.

These players can be true sophomores or redshirt sophomores. What’s clear, though, is they all stood out in their own way as freshmen last year. And this year, there are greater expectations for them to continue that success.

Pruitt will be looking to the sophomores to be the building blocks of his future. They were the first parts of what he’s trying to build, and they can help lock up roster spots while he recruits elsewhere. So it’s crucial they keep up what they’re doing.

But who are these players? Which ones don’t need the so-called second-year surge because they already did so in their first year? And what type of potential do they have coming off their first season? Let’s take a look at all of that here with our top five Vol sophomores entering the 2019 season for Tennessee football.