Tennessee football: Five areas Vols regressed from 2018 to 2019

Although the Volunteers improved overall in Jeremy Pruitt’s second season, Tennessee football did have some areas of regression.

With National Signing Day two days away, the focus is all on what Tennessee football can do to build on its 8-5 season. Given the fact that they were 5-7 the year before and went on a six-game winning streak to finish the year, the Vols were clearly significantly better in Jeremy Pruitt’s second season on the job.

However, the reason they didn’t even have a better record is due to not just slow or limited improvement in a few minor areas but outright regression in some areas. That can always be concerning when a coach is building a program, but some of the areas were understandable and even predictable.

Anyway, part of this recruiting class should be helping to shore up those regressions. Developing the players already on the roster is also part of that for Tennessee football. But in order to build on what they have done, they still need to acknowledge that regression.

In this post, we’re going to look at those specific areas the Vols regressed. Let’s note that this is not a negative article on the Vols. In fact, it can actually be viewed as a positive. After all, if they are going to regress in these areas and still improve by three games, they clearly have a lot of things to be proud of.

But it does mean they have a few more things to focus on this offseason, and if they can limit their regressions, their potential is through the roof. Simply put, if they didn’t have those regressions this past year, they would have easily finished 10-3.

Again, this post is specifically about areas the Vols got worse in from 2018 to 2019. They mostly improved from Year One to Year Two, and they actually got significantly better in some areas down the stretch of 2019.

That doesn’t change these facts though. So let’s break them down with the knowledge that they were still better overall. These are the five areas of regression Tennessee football suffered through in Pruitt’s second season.