It’s obvious to just about everyone where the optimism surrounding Tennessee comes from entering this football season.

“It’s the offense,” ESPN’s Bill Connelly said on WNML recently.

Tennessee’s explosive offense is the reason Connelly said his SP+ projections will have the Vols ranked near the top 10 in the nation when the 2022 season kicks off. But there’s something else that needs to happen if Tennessee is going to play near a top-10 level all season.

Improve on defense. But how much improvement do the Vols need to make? Midway through last season, Tennessee ranked in the top 30 of the SP+ defensive rankings. The Vols’ defense was playing better than almost anyone expected.

By the end of the season, Tennessee’s defense ranked No. 47. Why the drop off? Depth was the biggest factor.

Tennessee had a few top-level players, mainly defensive lineman Matthew Butler and defensive backs Theo Jackson and Alontae Taylor. But those guys are off to the NFL, which means Tennessee not only has to find their replacements but also players who can help provide some backup as the season goes along.

So where does Tennessee stand in trying to strengthen its defense? The Vols have more players competing for playing time in fall camp.

That starts up front as guys like Omari Thomas, Bryson Eason and Da’Jon Terry compete for playing time in the middle. On the outside, Tyler Baron will have a chance to break out this fall as he and returning starter Byron Young are being pushed by freshmen Joshua Josephs and James Pearce.

“That defensive line group will be deeper than we were a year ago,” coach Josh Heupel said following Tuesday’s scrimmage, “which is important to us as a program.”

It’s imperative for Tennessee to find replacements for Jackson and Taylor in the defensive backfield. Taylor was one of the SEC’s top cornerbacks with his ability to communicate with his teammates and make plays on the ball. His pick-six against Kentucky was the difference in the Vols leaving Lexington with a win.

Does Tennessee have a clear option to replace Taylor? It doesn’t appear so, especially with cornerback Kamal Hadden missing the last week due to injury.

Still, there’s more competition in the secondary thanks to player development, recruiting, and the arrivals of transfers Andre Turrentine (Ohio State) and Wesley Walker (Georgia Tech).

“We’re deeper in the secondary, too,” Heupel said. “You guys have seen that out at practice, just in pure bodies that we have compared to a year ago, but (also) athletic movement, traits, skillset, all of that.”

Tennessee will need senior cornerback Warren Burrell to play more consistently and safeties
Trevon Flowers and Jaylen McCollough to turn their experience into playmaking.

If Tennessee put together a priority list for the defense, it would probably look something like
this:

1) get third down stops (the Vols were 13th in the SEC last year in that department)
2) pressure the quarterback without having to rely as much on blitzing
3) find a lockdown corner to fill Taylor’s role

Items No. 2 and 3 will go a long way in determining the success of the first item. Tennessee’s offense should be good enough to keep Tennessee in most games and raise the floor of what this season can be. But in Heupel’s second season in Knoxville, there will be a lot more talk about raising the ceiling.

Last year, Tennessee’s scoring offense ranked No. 7 in the nation. The Vols were the only team ranked in the top-15 scoring offenses to not win at least eight games. That has to fall back on the defense.

“(Last year) I think we exceeded the expectations for everybody,” defensive line coach Rodney Garner said, “except for the guys in the room and probably the coaching staff. But nobody came to Tennessee, I think, to say they want to be 7-6. That’s not the standard.”

You can bet the veteran Garner will expect more out of his defensive linemen. The same can be said for the rest of Tennessee’s defensive coaches. They know it will be the determining factor in how much the Vols can improve from a year ago.

“The difference between having a top-50 defense and having a top-30 defense, that’s going to probably make the difference between six or seven wins and nine or 10,” Connelly said