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Tennessee football: Five offseason improvements for Vols to make in 2020

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - AUGUST 31: The Tennessee Volunteers warm up before the season opener against the Georgia State Panthers at Neyland Stadium on August 31, 2019 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Silas Walker/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - AUGUST 31: The Tennessee Volunteers warm up before the season opener against the Georgia State Panthers at Neyland Stadium on August 31, 2019 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Silas Walker/Getty Images) /
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Amidst a strong finish to the season, Tennessee football has lots of improvements to make this offseason. Here are the top 10 for the Volunteers.

Everybody in Vol nation is proud of how Tennessee football turned things around to finish the 2019 season. The Vols went from an 0-2 start with two home losses to Group of Five schools to win six straight at the end of the year and finish 8-5.

A Gator Bowl comeback win over the Indiana Hoosiers won’t soon be forgotten. UT restored the morale among its fan-base that was collapsing, and they now have the second longest winning streak among all Power Five schools, only trailing the national champion LSU Tigers.

However, the overall story behind the turnaround can’t be lost. We have to look at what this means for Rocky Top going forward into Jeremy Pruitt’s third year, as this season was all about getting one step closer to re-establishing the Tennessee football program as a powerhouse.

Although there aren’t a lot of players leaving this year, there are plenty of key ones. The Vols are losing their go-to receiver, their three leading playmakers on defense and their No. 2 wideout and star punt returner. Losing their top tight end certainly doesn’t help matters either.

While they have a lot of young talent waiting in the wings to replace those guys, there are things Pruitt’s team as a whole is going to have to work on this offseason to avoid a drop-off. Certain flaws that plagued the team this year could other wise prove disastrous.

As we get set to look at where the Vols need to improve, we’re not going to focus this post on any unit rankings in general. These are specific areas they struggled in this past year, and they lasted beyond just the rough start to the season.

We saw these flaws all the way through the Gator Bowl, and Pruitt needs to spend spring ball, summer workouts and Fall camp making sure his guys improve upon them. If he doesn’t 2020 could become a major problem.

But which issues are we looking at? How deep are the Vols’ problems? Well, they’re not as deep as they were at the end of last year, but they do exist. So let’s break them down. These are the five improvements Tennessee football needs to make during the 2020 offseason.

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