Tennessee football: Data is clear; Spring game concerning for defense

Analysts may be high on Tennessee football putting up an exciting offense next year under Josh Heupel, and Heupel’s track record proves that. However, the 42-37 score from the Orange and White game is actually evidence of the opposite.

Conventional wisdom says it’s always a concern when the defense is behind the offense early in the offseason. That’s not a proven data point in most cases, but it actually is when you look at Heupel’s previous years with the UCF Knights. There was no spring game in 2020, but these are the scores from the other two spring games Heupel ran: 23-17 in 2019, 17-14 in 2018.

It’s safe to say those are not high-scoring spring games. However, when the season arrived, UCF averaged over 43 points both times. Taking that into account, spring game wasn’t indicative of how the offense was going to perform, and it shouldn’t be for Tennessee football either.

Heck, Jeremy Pruitt’s final spring game was a 28-10 score back in 2019. Nobody would say that Vols team had a better offense than UCF despite scoring more total points than UCF’s 2018 spring game and only two fewer total points than their 2019 spring game.

If that’s the case, the only other explanation is that the Vols’ defense is in for a rough year. Now, to be fair, it’s early, and the defense was extremely limited due to issues at linebacker and the switch back to a 4-3 base with a heavy emphasis on nickel.

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However, if you watched the game on Saturday, you could see genuine frustration from the defensive coaches, including defensive coordinator Tim Banks. Players were consistently caught out of position and allowing too many busted coverages.

Also, don’t forget that the Vols have a veteran defensive line with everybody back, and they consistently lost the battles in the trenches against an offensive line that lost Wanya Morris, Trey Smith and Brandon Kennedy. That was another huge concern.

Simply put, Heupel’s track record and what we know about Tennessee football’s personnel left no excuses for the defense to struggle the way it did. The numbers suggest a problematic defense is much more of an issue than a potent offense.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the team won’t still be fun to watch. Heupel will push the tempo and try to make games as high-scoring as possible. If the Vols struggle, they’ll do it scoring 30 points a game, and that will at least give fans something to enjoy going to the games.

Scoring at that level will also give UT a chance to compete against teams it shouldn’t compete against. That’s another big advantage, and even as they rebuild, it could make enough of a splash to generate more interest in the program, so it’s not a total loss.

At the same time, though, what happened on Saturday is no sign of a great offense coming to Rocky Top, even if things do get more exciting. Tennessee football has lots of issues to work out, and while they may score 30 points a game, they look like they could give up 60.