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Tennessee football: Five concerns for Vols 2020 offseason

By Caleb Calhoun

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI - NOVEMBER 23: Head coach Jeremy Pruitt of the Tennessee Volunteers leads his team to to the field prior to a game against the Missouri Tigers at Faurot Field/Memorial Stadium on November 23, 2019 in Columbia, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
COLUMBIA, MISSOURI - NOVEMBER 23: Head coach Jeremy Pruitt of the Tennessee Volunteers leads his team to to the field prior to a game against the Missouri Tigers at Faurot Field/Memorial Stadium on November 23, 2019 in Columbia, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Silas Walker/Getty Images
Photo by Silas Walker/Getty Images /

Jeremy Pruitt has been on a roll in recent weeks. However, not everything is perfect for Tennessee football. Here are five Volunteers offseason concerns.

It was an awesome January for Tennessee football. The Vols only made it better with National Signing Day in early February, as Jeremy Pruitt secured the program’s first top 10 recruiting class since back in 2015. And he may not even be done with five-star Zachary Evans still out there.

Taking all of that into account, UT has been on Cloud Nine, even above Rocky Top, over the past few weeks. Dating back to their Gator Bowl comeback win over the Indiana Hoosiers, they haven’t been able to stop winning.

However, not everything is perfect. If Vol fans have learned anything over the past decade and a half, it’s that caution must follow any string of good news for Tennessee football. After all, that’s how it always seems to work out.

As a result, in this post, we’re going to bring in the reasons for caution at this point. Remember, not everything is perfect, and underlying issues can really begin to expose themselves if people ignore them the whole time.

Remember January and February of 2016? UT won the Outback Bowl, secured its first top 25 finish in eight years, hired Bob Shoop as its defensive coordinator and benefitted from the decision of key players, most notably Alvin Kamara, to return for the following year. Oh, and Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl.

But then the ball dropped with the sexual assault lawsuit that brought the Manning scandal from 1996 back up. That plagued the university through the summer, and it showed just how quickly a mood can be reversed.

Of course, there’s nothing anywhere near as severe currently looming over Big Orange country. However, much more mundane things could still affect the program. Some are on the field while others are off the field.

So what issues are we talking about? How could the mood possibly be brought down at the moment? Let’s go ahead and analyze that. These are the five concerns surrounding Tennessee football during the Vols’ 2020 offseason.

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