Tennessee football’s Five most encouraging signs from 2022 spring practice

2. Defense appeared ahead of the offense.

This is based on a bit of conventional wisdom, but it’s generally true. In spring practice, you want your defense to be winning the day because it usually picks things up before the offense. If the offense is ahead, it’s usually a sign of the defense being awful, not the offense being good. That’s even the case for Tennessee football with so much returning talent offensively.

Well, this year, the defense appeared to clear the bar. That really showed in the open scrimmage, as the defense dominated, particularly on the line. The defensive line was dominant in every way, and there were multiple defensive touchdowns on that day, all huge deals.

Most of the improvement throughout the practices, based on Heupel’s quotes, appeared to happen on the offense, which means they entered spring ball with more room to grow. That means the defense was already ahead of them, a crucial sign.

Now, when fall camp arrives, it’ll be a bit of a different story. What makes it better for Rocky Top is that the defense won the spring despite the secondary being without every cornerback who will likely be an impact player this fall and undergoing tons of attrition on the defensive line.