Tennessee football: 10 things for Vols to work on during bye week

1. Decision-making in the passing game

Regardless of who takes over at quarterback when Tennessee football comes off the bye week, the decision-making has got to be better. It’s the biggest reason for the Vols’ slow start, and the quarterback is the most responsible.

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Jarrett Guarantano has been hampered, to be fair, with pass protection issues at times, guys not eluding tackles when he trusts them to and receivers dropping some perfect passes. However, the issues have mostly been on him, even when these mistakes have been made. He could have avoided all of them.

Too often he has missed wide open targets. Sometimes, when another player made a mistake, it was because he was too late getting rid of the ball. The best example of that was when Jauan Jennings dropped that touchdown pass against the BYU Cougars. Another late delivery resulted in him missing a wide open touchdown pass to Dominick Wood-Anderson at the Florida Gators.

Then there are just all the passes into coverage. Guarantano got away with one that was tipped on 4th and goal against BYU because Jennings caught it for a touchdown. But then he threw an interception into triple-coverage, which is the only reason the Cougars got a TD in regulation to send it to overtime anyway.

Simply put, Guarantano’s decision-making has been very problematic. Tennessee football needs him to step it up, and if he is sent to the bench, they will need Brian Maurer or J.T. Shrout, whomever gets the job, to take it to another level. That needs to be a major focus throughout these two weeks if the Vols are to improve.