7. Strength and conditioning
Jones went away from long-time strength coach Dave Lawson in the offseason and turned football workouts over to Michael Szerszen, who had been under Lawson for the past few years. Early in the season, it looked like it might have been the right move. The Vols were a second-half team for the first few weeks of the year. But then the injuries continued to pile up and the Vols faltered down the stretch. Injuries will always be part of football – nobody can change that – but the amount that Tennessee experienced this year was alarming. That’s not to say that Szerszen, or anybody else in the strength and conditioning program, was the issue, but it at least has to be evaluated.
