Tennessee football: Ranking Vols position groups by spring practice play

Many Tennessee football players revealed a lot about themselves this past spring practice. Here is our ranking of Volunteers position groups from then.

With lots of returning talent except for at one position, we have a general idea of the strengths and weaknesses surrounding this year’s Tennessee football team. After all, the Vols gave us enough evidence on that last tear.

However, there are new coaches, new recruits coming in and guys getting healthy. A second year in the pro-style offense, even with a new offensive coordinator, and in the 3-4 defense is probably a huge advantage for this team.

That means we won’t know for sure which units are the strongest for Tennessee football until the season starts. However, the spring gave us some insight. At least based on the people who played in the spring, we gained an idea of some things.

In this post, we’re going to rank the units based on their play. We label something a unit if it has a specific position coach. For instance, special teams is one entity. Meanwhile, linebackers are separated into edge rushers (outside linebackers) and inside linebackers.

Many of the future stars were obviously not on the team in the spring because of the pending summer arrivals. So don’t take all of this to heart. This is just a ranking of how the players healthy and in the program performed at each unit during the spring.

That can help paint a picture of what things will look like but still leaves room for a lot of change. And one thing that does help anyway is the fact that there were numerous early enrollees on the team, so many of the recruits did help give us an idea.

Anyway, let’s go ahead and break down how they stack up against each other so far. Know that we’re obviously going to update this before the season starts with the new talent. Until then, though, this is our ranking of every Tennessee football unit based on its spring practice play.