Tennessee football: 10 toughest Vols to replace for 2020 season

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Scouting Report. Pick Analysis. Inside Linebacker. player. 839. Graduation. Daniel Bituli. 1

If anybody needs to see how much Tennessee football suffered without Daniel Bituli, they just need to plug in the tape of the first game last year. The Vols’ horrendous defensive play against the Georgia State Panthers nearly turned 2019 into a disaster.

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Bituli missed the first two games to clean up an injury, and UT lost those two games at home to inferior competition. If you just looked at the rest of the season, it would have gone as planned. But those two games are why Jeremy Pruitt’s team was playing from behind until the end, and it is largely due to Bituli’s absence.

He was the guy who called the plays for the defense. Even with those two games out, Bituli still had 69 tackles and led the team with 42 solo tackles. He also had four and a half tackles for a loss, three sacks, two pass deflections, a forced fumble, and most notably, a blocked punt that he returned for a touchdown.

The masterpiece of his college career came at the Kentucky Wildcats, where he had 19 total tackles and then, with Kentucky having two chances from the one to stick it in trailing 17-13 late, coming away with a tackle to stop them both times. Bituli was the star of that UT win.

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With Bituli gone, the Vols still have Henry To’o To’o, who developed all last year. But he’s the only proven inside linebacker. Quavaris Crouch, J.J. Peterson and Solon Page III still have more to prove. That combined with Bituli’s production and leadership what Tennessee football did without him is why he will clearly be the most missed player next year.

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