Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Vols media session pre-fall camp 2022

One day ahead of fall camp for 2022, Tennessee football head coach Josh Heupel took the podium along with defensive coordinator Tim Banks and offensive coordinator Alex Golesh. You can see the full press conference involving all three of them by clicking here. Surprisingly, lots of information was revealed at this event.

From the state of the team’s health to who is making a run at open spots in the depth chart, the Vols are entering fall camp with a pretty good idea of which players will fill which voids. Honestly, that should give them a huge advantage when it comes to the season.

Experience, familiarity and chemistry aren’t the only factors when determining a team’s success, but they are indeed factors. Lots of that was revealed in this Sunday press conference, so let’s take a look at the information we can glean from it. These are our five takeaways from Tennessee football’s media session pre-2022 fall camp.

5. Team is mostly healthy except for Len’Neth Whitehead

It was a shock earlier in the day when the news came out that Len’Neth Whitehead would be gone for the season. The Vols don’t have any other power running backs in their system due to the transfers of Tee Hodge early last year and Dee Beckwith this past offseason. As a result, short-yardage plays could be an issue for them again.

That’s the bad news for the program, and make no mistake, it’s devastating bad news. On the other hand, at least with camp getting ready to start, the good news for UT is that no other players are hurt right now. Of course, that could change once practices get underway.

In general, Whitehead’s injury, which is an upper-body issue, outweighs the lack of injury elsewhere entering Tennessee football’s second fall camp under Heupel. That’s because other injuries are bound to pop up, so it’s hard to just pretend everything else is fine. Whitehead’s injury is devastating, and it could easily get worse.