There may not be a team across college football that looks more different than Tennessee has in just a years time. In 2024, the Vols pushed their way into the College Football Playoffs behind arguably the best defense in the country. Through three games in 2025, Tennessee’s offense has taken the headlines instead.
In Week Three, the Vols fell short in overtime to Georgia in a 44-41 loss. Behind Joey Aguilar’s arm, Tennessee’s offense struck early and produced 496 yards of offense. However, UT’s defense allowed Georgia to put up 502 yards.
So, what has to change going forward? Besides getting the starting cornerbacks and pair of defensive tackles back from injury, the Vols need to tighten up on defense to parlay with the dynamic offense that has featured some new looks. Tennessee linebackers coach William Inge gave his thoughts on what the adjustments need to be.
“Just make sure you work to finish,” Inge said. “Finish your plays, finish the sequence, finish on third down. That probably was the biggest thing was on third downs. And when you continue to peel layers away, it was making sure that you can be even more efficient on second down, because some of the second downs led to a third down in medium or third down in short. And if you can be effective there, now you get them in the third down and longs. And that’s been our calling card. So we have to continue to, as we would say, bounce back and get to where we’ve been and do what we do.”
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As far as linebackers, Tennessee has relied primarily on its top three. Starters Arion Carter and Jeremiah Telander, along with backup Edwin Spillman, have gotten the majority of snaps. Behind the trio, Ben Bolton and freshman Jaedon Harmon have also gotten in the mix.
While the linebackers did fine, Inge does see areas that will need to improve. It’s not an overhaul of anything, either, just some small details that need to be tuned.
“The biggest thing just on our end is a couple of small things, and usually it always comes down to details of being able to finish some plays when you’re in the open space,” Inge said. “We had a few missed tackles that we have to clean up. That’s probably the biggest thing on our end, that we’ve got to make sure that we continue to address and clean up and go through the work on a day-to-day basis.”
Tennessee’s defense will get the chance to rebuild some confidence this week. The Vols host UAB on Saturday at 12:45 p.m. ET on SEC Network. While the Blazers’ offense isn’t bad, it’ll still be a much easier matchup for UT.
