3 Reasons for Skepticism for Tennessee This Upcoming Season

Here are my biggest three reasons why I'm skeptical of Josh Heupel's Volunteers ahead of the 2025-26 college football season.

There hasn’t been this much uncertainty heading into a new Tennessee football season since head football coach Josh Heupel’s first season in Knoxville. Tennessee has won thirty games over the last three years. They have had a different starting quarterback in each of those three years. That trend continues this year after expected second-year starter Nico Iamaleava’s stunning departure in April. Tennessee’s best two offensive players from last season are also gone: Dylan Sampson and Dont’e Thornton Jr. Tennessee’s best two defensive linemen from last season are gone, too: James Pearce Jr. and Omarr Norman-Lott. The Volunteers return just one starter on the offensive line from last season, too. And yet, ESPN college football writer Bill Connelly’s SP+ statistic, which includes returning production, projects the Vols as the No. 13 team in FBS this upcoming season. Even after Iamaleava’s departure, Tennessee’s win total projection over on FanDuel went from 9.5 to 8.5 wins. With or without the former 5-star quarterback, somewhere around the nine-win mark felt right.

In this two-part series here on TRSM, I’m going to make the case for both optimism and skepticism when it comes to the 2025 Tennessee Volunteers.

---

The Wide Receivers

Of the seven scholarship wide receivers in Tennessee wide receivers coach Kelsey Pope’s room, six are blue-chippers. Three of the seven are true freshmen. The lone three-star in Pope’s extremely talented position room is also, coincidentally, the lone upperclassman. There is no harder position group to project this season on Tennessee’s roster, and it is not particularly close.

Tennessee is likely to start their first five-star wide receiver in 2025 on the outside in redshirt freshman Mike Matthews. In the slot, the Vols are likely to start fellow 2024 blue-chip wideout Braylon Staley. Former Tulane transfer Chris Brazzell II enters his second season at Tennessee, likely as the final starter opposite Matthews on the outside. If this trio has the same kind of good fortune on the injury front that the 2021 trio of Velus Jones Jr., Cedric Tillman, and Javonta Payton had, my skepticism about this unit quickly transforms into optimism. Jones Jr. played in all 13 games in 2021. Tillman and Payton combined for 1357 snaps. Nearly 2,000 snaps for that trio combined. Jones Jr. and Tillman were also two of Tennessee’s top five offensive players in 2021, per PFF. It all worked with first-year starter Hendon Hooker.

It feels like forever since many people longed to see more of a rotation at wide receiver. In 2025, you hope the trio of Matthews, Staley, and Brazzell II accumulate similar numbers. This trio staying healthy and playing the kind of snaps that the earlier trio did in 2021 is the best path for the Vols’ passing game to look less like it has over the last two seasons and more like it did the previous two seasons before that.

However, former Tennessee slot receiver Squirrel White fought through injuries last season en route to his worst statistical season over three years on Rocky Top. The year prior, wideout Bru McCoy suffered a brutal season-ending injury vs. South Carolina in the fifth game of the season that upended what looked to be a breakout year for the USC transfer. The year before that, Cedric Tillman suffered an ankle injury against Akron in the third game of the season that upended what looked to be a breakout year for the now-Cleveland Browns starting wideout. In 2022, Ramel Keyton answered the bell for the injured Tillman. In 2025, the Vols would likely have to call on a true freshman like Radarious Jackson or Travis Smith Jr. If Matthews, Staley and Brazzell II get close to that 2,000 combined snap number, the Vols passing game could be a lot of fun again, but if they can’t stay healthy this position could get dicey in a hurry.

3 Reasons for Optimism for Tennessee This Upcoming Season

The Linebackers, Lance Heard Jr. & Andre Turrentine

The wide receivers aren’t the only position room that has to stay healthy. Tennessee has continued to do a solid job of accumulating blue-chip talent over the last couple of recruiting cycles in several of its position rooms, particularly at offensive tackle and linebacker.

Keenan Pili, Kalib Perry, and Jalen Smith are gone from last year’s linebacker room. Linebackers coach William Inge’s position group is loaded to be sure, but it’s loaded with inexperienced talent. Junior Arion Carter led the Vols in tackles in 2024. He, along with fellow junior Jeremiah Telander, is tasked with both staying healthy and leading the next wave of blue-chip linebackers behind them like Edwin Spillman, Jordan Burns, and Jaedon Harmon. Tennessee’s future at linebacker is bright, but Carter and Telander are going to be counted on to give those talented young linebackers behind them time to develop.

The same is true at offensive tackle and safety, as Tennessee needs twelve regular-season games and a whole lot of quality snaps out of left tackle Lance Heard Jr. and safety Andre Turrentine. The latter has started sixteen straight games for Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks’ position group. With left tackle Larry Johnson III off to Colorado via the transfer portal, and right tackles John Campbell Jr. and Dayne Davis out of eligibility, Heard Jr. is the lone tackle with a healthy amount of experience in Glenn Elarbee’s position room. The same is true for Banks’ safeties as veterans Jakobe Thomas and Christian Charles left in the spring transfer portal window, and Will Brooks ran out of eligibility. There are a lot of talented young players behind Heard and Turrentine – like Kaleb Beasley, Edrees Farooq, David Sanders Jr., Bennett Warren, Jesse Perry, Sham Umarov, among several others – but these two, like Carter and Telander, have to have strong, healthy 2025 seasons on Rocky Top for Tennessee to win nine or more games.