It’s a dawn of a new Tennessee football season as the Vols begin Josh Heupel’s fourth season as head coach against instate foe Chattanooga at Neyland Stadium.
The Mocs have high expectations this season and enter the year as a top 10 team in the FCS. But they shouldn’t pose much of a threat against Tennessee on Saturday.
Every week in this article I’ll lay out three keys for Tennessee to earn a victory. But with the winner of the game in little doubt ahead of the instate matchup, I’ll lay out three keys for Tennessee to feel good exiting the matchup. Staying healthy is the obvious one, but I’m not going to include it because it is self explanatory.
More From RTI: Complete Tennessee-Chattanooga Preview
Tempo Returns To Form
My eyes will mostly be on Tennessee’s offense in this one and there’s two things that the Vols were missing on offense last season that I want to see if they get back with Nico Iamaleava at quarterback.
The first is the tempo. Tennessee had a top three offense by plays run per minute in Josh Heupel’s first two seasons as head coach. That tempo went down significantly last season with Joe Milton III starting at quarterback. But there was a real sign of life in the bowl game. With Nico Iamaleava starting at quarterback, Tennessee moved at a faster tempo than they had all season.
That’s a real reason to believe that Tennessee can get back to that level this season. The Vols depth at receiver and running back is also encouraging and makes it feasible for them to play as effectively at the fast tempo as they ever have before.
If Tennessee runs at a tempo that’s more familiar to what we saw in 2021 and 2022 it will be a reason for optimism leaving week one.
Tennessee Hits Chunk Plays In Passing Game
The second thing that I want to see Tennessee’s offense get back to this season is hitting chunk plays in the passing game. Those vertical passing plays are what truly strikes fear into opponents about Tennessee’s offense and the lack of them last season was a big reason why the offense took a major step back.
While Tennessee’s offense ran at a faster tempo in the Citrus Bowl, they still failed to hit deep shots down the field. Now, the offensive line was beat up and struggled in the game and Tennessee expects its receivers to be better this season, but implementing Iamaleava wasn’t a quick fix for this part of the offense.
Against a Chattanooga team that is inexperienced at cornerback, Tennessee needs to be able to connect on deep shots down the field. It doesn’t have to be rampant. The Vols will likely call a pretty vanilla game offensively but not hitting a couple deep shots would be at least a small reason for concern.
Iamaleava connecting with receivers on those passes would be an encouraging sign for Tennessee’s offense.
Young Secondary Players Make Plays
Tennessee is breaking in new starters at every single spot in the secondary and that makes the Vols’ back five one of the biggest question marks on the team entering the season.
But with true sophomore Rickey Gibson and Jermod McCoy poised to start at corner, there’s good reason to be optimistic at that spot. Those guys are talented young players. If they can step up and make some plays in the opener than it would be a good reason optimism for the rest of the season.
I’m less optimistic about the safety spot, but anything positive that happens in the secondary and helps build confidence headed into week two would be a good sign.
