Tennessee football: Five Vols who need to keep up performances past bye

Despite a 1-3 start, Tennessee football has a few players who have done their part. These are the Volunteers who need to keep up their play after the bye.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the horrendous start to the season that Tennessee football suffered to open up Jeremy Pruitt’s second year on the job. Now, after a wek off, panic is beginning to set in on Rocky Top.

However, it’s not all bad. In fact, despite no wins yet over an FBS opponent, two losses at home to Group of Five schools and a 34-3 loss in their only game against a Power Five school, a few players give this team hope.

As they have continued to fight through the disappointing losses, certain players have kept their focus, trying to turn things around for Tennessee football. It may not happen against the Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday, but they at least give the Vols hope.

After a bye week, these are the guys who just need to keep doing what they are doing. In this post, we’re going to take a look at those specific players and compliment them for what they did through the first four games.

Offensive, defensive and special teams players all make the list, and some make it despite having played a limited amount of time. To be fair, on a 1-3 team, we should note that it’s hard to find a bunch of standout performers, so we tweaked our standards a bit.

But at the same time, none of these guys, even if they have made mistakes, have done enough to warrant significant criticism. And for every mistake one player made, he has made numerous big plays to make up for it. So it’s not hard for us to give them some praise.

Which players are we talking about, though? Who are these people that give a 1-3 team some hope? Let’s break them down here. These are the five Vols who need to keep up the play they had before Tennessee football entered its bye week.