Tennessee football vs. UAB: Five Vols to watch for against Blazers

Given how they struggled early this year, Tennessee football can’t take the UAB Blazers lightly. Here are five key Volunteers to avoiding that.

After an 0-2 start that included home losses to the Georgia State Panthers and BYU Cougars, Tennessee football is not likely to overlook the UAB Blazers. After all, this team is 6-1 on the year and on track to repeat as C-USA champions.

The rise of the Blazers is the story of college football the past three years that nobody is talking about, as they came back from the dead in 2017, three years after the program was suspended, only for Bill Clark to turn the program into an elite Group of Five school. Winning on Rocky Top is not beyond the realm of possibility for this team.

However, after last week’s 41-21 win over the South Carolina Gamecocks, Tennessee football’s elite playmakers are starting to step up and make more splash plays. So many of them came through in a big way in that game, and Jeremy Pruitt will be looking for more of that from his 3-5 team as he attempts to reach a bowl game to close out the season.

It has to start against UAB. He needs all of his key defensive playmakers to step up again, and he has to find a way to exploit the few UAB weaknesses that have shown through the first two months of the 2019 season. There aren’t many of them.

Our look at the key Vols in this game, however, will take all of that into account. While a team effort will be needed to win this game, the Vols clearly win by having their big-play guys on defense step up in the biggest moments.

There are a couple of areas of UAB that UT can exploit, but even doing that requires elite play from those guys. And there are a couple of non-glamorous guys on offense who have to make an impact as well. Let’s break all of them down. These are the five Vols to watch for when Tennessee football hosts the Blazers on Saturday.