Tennessee’s defense faced criticism in the middle of the season for inefficiencies in the tackling department against SEC teams. The poor tackling led to extended plays and drives that proved to be backbreaking for the Vols’ defense at times.
Things came to a boil against Kentucky in Week 9 with missed opportunities leading to a season-high in scoring and passing yards from the Wildcats’ offense. Despite the win, Tennessee’s players said it was something that was being addressed inside the locker room.
“That’s a big point of emphasis this week because the last couple of games, our tackling has been terrible,” Tennessee senior defensive lineman Dom Bailey said before the Oklahoma game. “So that’s something we have been focusing on a lot.”
Defensive teammate and veteran linebacker Jeremiah Telander agreed with Bailey’s assessment.
“Yeah, that’s definitely fair,” Telander said about Bailey’s ‘terrible’ comment. “We’ve got to make our play at the point of attack. Y’all see it, we see it. Coaches are coaching us up. It’s something that we practice all the time.”
Bailey and Telander’s comments show that there was a clear emphasis on finishing tackles leading into the Oklahoma game two weekends ago. To Tennessee’s credit, the tackling was more consistent against the Sooners than it had been in the weeks leading up to it.
Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said on Monday that the team had added a few extra elements to the practice schedule to tighten things up before the game against the Sooners.
“I think tackling happens in a positive way because of body position,” Heupel said about the tackling against Oklahoma. “And some of that stems from your alignment and eyes allowing you to get into a good position. There’s things that we do during the course of every week. There’s some things that we added during that week. Some things we did this past week as well. Again, just placing an emphasis on those things and hopefully you want it to correlate to game day. It did against Oklahoma, but we’re going to need that as we go down the stretch.”
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Tennessee defensive lineman Daevin Hobbs said that the week of practice leading into the OU game helped set the tone for the defensive performance that the Vols had.
“We came out, we played good,” Hobbs said last week about the Oklahoma game. “I mean, for the most part, I feel like we played really good that game as a defense. As a whole team, too, but as a defense, mainly, I feel like we locked in that week during practice, made everything on point, and then we went out there. We played a solid game.”
Despite the loss to the Sooners, Tennessee’s defense did play better for a good chunk of the game. More efficient tackling played a role in that. Things weren’t perfect by any stretch, but perhaps it’s a building block for the final three games of the season, including rivalry contests against both Florida and Vanderbilt.
No. 25 Tennessee will return to action this weekend with a home game against New Mexico State on Saturday at 4:15 p.m. ET.
