Tennessee football: Why 2023 preseason polls are struggling to place Vols

Cautious optimism has been the phrase to surround Tennessee football entering 2022. Despite finishing last year just one game over .500 and not securing a top 10 recruiting class, factors like experience, another year under Josh Heupel and less drama are all positives for the program.

Still, these conflicting points are why Chip Patterson of CBS Sports named the Vols the sixth most difficult team to place for preseason polls. This was an article about teams that have the largest disparities in their placement in rankings across preseason services.

There were seven teams on this list overall, including the Oklahoma State Cowboys, USC Trojans, Oregon Ducks, N.C. State Wolfpack, Cincinnati Bearcats and Ole Miss Rebels. Here’s what was written about why Tennessee football made it.

"The expectation is that we will once again see Josh Heupel’s Vols put up points, but in 2021 all those points still only resulted in a 7-win season. So can the defense level up even with losses to key contributors? Some clearly believe so, penciling the Vols in as high as fourth among SEC teams in preseason rankings, falling somewhere between No. 15 and No. 20 nationally. Others foresee something a little closer to last season, placing the Vols either on the very edge, or just outside, the top 25."

Patterson, like many analysts, is pointing to questions surrounding the Vols’ defense, as everybody is confident the offense will be fine. What happened in the Music City Bowl against the Purdue Boilermakers bolsters that argument.

However, UT is actually difficult to place for other reasons. After all, the bowl game wasn’t indicative of how the defense played most of the year. They were largely fine and only struggled because they played so many possession.

The real question is if experience outweighs recruiting. Rocky Top returns so much talent on both sides of the ball, and they now have another year of being familiar with the systems run by Heupel and Tim Banks. There’s also not the looming threat that came with the NCAA investigation into the program last year.

Going 7-6 without that experience and with that threat last year is why they are expected to take a huge leap forward this year, but you still can’t ignore 7-6 and minimal talent added. The best additions were in the transfer portal, most notably Bru McCoy and Andre Turrentine.

A wildcard for Tennessee football is the schedule. UT’s first three Power Five games are against the Pittsburgh Panthers who may be rebuilding and two teams with first-year head coaches, the LSU Tigers and Florida Gators. That’s part of their first five games, so 5-0 is on the table. Still, everything is a wildcard for the Vols at this point.