Tennessee football and Oklahoma had plenty of familiarity going into Saturday’s contest, with the teams meeting each other in Norman just a year ago. However, there have been plenty of personnel changes on both sides of the ball since then. The position group most revamped for UT may be its offensive line.
In 2024, the Vols used a line that featured, from left to right, Lance Heard, Andrej Karic, Cooper Mays, Javontez Spraggins and John Campbell. Players such as Jackson Lampley and Dayne Davis were also mixed in at times.
This year, in 2025, just one of those seven players is on the roster. Heard is returning for his second year at Tennessee and third in college, where he reprised the role of starting left tackle. Around him are all newcomers or players who have climbed their way up the depth chart.
Against the Sooners, the starting unit featured, from left to right, Heard, Wendell Moe Jr., Sam Pendleton, Jesse Perry and David Sanders Jr. However, Perry went down, and it was Sham Umarov stepping in to help fill out the line for the second half of the game.
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Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables took notice of the change from last season to this season and thought it was a noticeably better group than the one he faced a year ago. Despite this, he liked how his team handled the challenge.
“They’re a good offense, man,” Venables said. “They have a good quarterback, excellent receivers. We really felt like they were the most physical offensive line. They’re night-and-day better than what they were a year ago. Our guys matched the physicality and then some. At the end of the day, I thought that on both sides of the lines of scrimmage, I felt like that was, you know, one of the biggest differences in the game and why we won.”
Oklahoma got to quarterback Joey Aguilar for two sacks on the game. PFF pinned those on Pendleton and Sanders. However, Aguilar was hurried 12 times. Pendleton was responsible for four of those, with Heard, Perry, Sanders and Moe all allowing two.
In terms of pressures allowed, Tennessee allowed 16 with Pendleton leading the category with five.
