We’ve already published the lead measures we’ll be monitoring to gauge the Vols’ progress this fall, but before the season kicks off, we wanted to also provide a visual of all of the Vols’ statistical rankings from 2018 to show both where they need to improve the most and where they need to preserve their gains from last season.
Offense
The offense was surprisingly good in the red zone in 2018, and when they did throw, they averaged a lot of yards doing it and kept from throwing it to the other team.
But . . .
. . . Whoa. That is one terrible first impression every time we met a new set of downs. We might as well have skipped directly to second down and started from there.
Pretty much everything but the three items mentioned above was Not Good, but productivity on first down and not allowing tackles for loss are at the top of the wishlist heading into 2019 for the offense. Improving those two things will likely have a significant positive impact on the most important offensive benchmarks of Passing, Rushing, and Scoring Offense.
Defense
There’s a little less red here, but a lot more yellow. The main thing for the defense to accomplish this fall is to make major improvements in the red zone and then to tighten the bolts everywhere else until it all gets better. Unlike their offensive counterparts, they were not allergic to first down.
Special Teams
The Tennessee special teams units were fine in every phase but kickoffs. Improve that, and they’ll be the strength of the team until everything else catches up.
Turnovers and Penalties
The team wasn’t terrible from a penalties perspective last season, but the offense needs to not fumble as much as last year, and the defense needs to do a better job taking the ball away from the other team.