Where the Tennessee Vols fall in summer SEC power rankings
The Tennessee Vols enter the summer months as a team that's not viewed by most national media outlets as a top five SEC program. The majority of SEC power rankings have the Vols in the middle of the pack. That includes the latest SEC power rankings from 247Sports, which have Tennessee as the No. 7 […]
The Tennessee Vols enter the summer months as a team that's not viewed by most national media outlets as a top five SEC program.
The majority of SEC power rankings have the Vols in the middle of the pack. That includes the latest SEC power rankings from 247Sports, which have Tennessee as the No. 7 team in the conference as summer gets underway.
From 247Sports' Brad Crawford: If there's one potential elite team in the SEC that's tough to judge right now, it's Tennessee. That said, it's always nice to have two of the top players in the SEC starting on each side of the football and that's the situation Josh Heupel is in with the Vols. Assuming Nico Iamaleava is the real deal at quarterback and James Pearce has another disruptive season on defense, Tennessee should make moves inside the top 20. The secondary could be worrisome since much of it's brand new and there are heightened expectations on the budding group of running back to assist Iamaleava and make things easy on the first-year starter.
247Sports Brad Crawford nailed it when it comes to the Vols with his first sentence above.
Tennessee, objectively, is an extremely tough team to judge at this point in the offseason. If everything plays out as expected — Nico Iamaleava proves to be an elite quarterback, the offensive line stays healthy, James Pearce continues to dominate the line of scrimmage, and the Vols' new-look secondary plays at a high level — then the Vols could very easily be one of the teams included in the new 12-team College Football Playoff. The Vols, however, have to prove it before folks in the national media are going to jump back on the Tennessee hype train after it nearly derailed last fall during an 8-4 regular season.
Of course, there's uncertainty with several of the teams in front of the Vols, too. Can Kalen DeBoer pick up where Nick Saban left off? Will Ole Miss thrive with a roster full of transfers? Are the Missouri Tigers for real?
We'll start to the answers to those questions when the season kicks off in late August.
Tennessee has a massive opportunity to take Vols’ recruiting to the next level that they can’t afford to pass up
Vols can’t pass that opportunity up
