Joshua Josephs Is The Most Important Player For Tennessee Football Next Season
The senior four-star LEO out of North Cobb has to make one final leap for the Vols in 2025.
We’re just about three months away from Tennessee’s opening game against Syracuse at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta at noon EST on ABC. Head football coach Josh Heupel’s team has a lot of offseason questions to answer between now and then – more than any since his first summer in Knoxville back in 2021 – but isn’t that one of the things that make this all so much fun?
The Vols enter the summer with their first open competition to become QB1 since that aforementioned debut season under Heupel. Tennessee also has a couple of offensive line starting jobs up for grabs. The Vols have a starting tailback job up for grabs. They may even have a starting wideout job up for grabs, too. The Vol offense will look and feel a lot different in 2025 with so much turnover across the board from a season ago — just two starters from last season are back. That is not inherently a negative, though, as we learned with Tennessee’s secondary turnover in the prior offseason. Instead, the Vols’ secondary featured the best cornerback duo this century, and the Vols were the lone defense in the SEC to not allow a pass play of fifty yards or more last season. (They only allowed two passing plays of forty-plus yards, too, which was also an SEC-best.)
Sure, Tennessee lost some real production on defense from a season ago. Edge rusher James Pearce Jr. accounted for 17.5 sacks over the last two seasons for the team in orange and white. Defensive tackle Omarr Norman-Lott was a force on the interior, especially rushing the passer on key passing downs, and will be missed. However, defensive coordinator Tim Banks’ defenses have performed better and better each year on Rocky Top, a gradual rise that culminated in a top-10 scoring defense in 2024. The Vols were No. 1 in scoring defense in FBS at home last season, at 9.9 opposing points per game. (Perhaps one of the most overlooked reasons why Heupel has lost just one home game in his last three seasons at Tennessee.)
Simply put, the defense continuing to grow and prosper more each year under Banks has been enormous for the Vols in the Heupel era. Tennessee has won 19 games across the last two seasons, and the Vols have been in the top-25 in scoring defense both years. In 2024, the Vols were 78th in scoring offense vs. SEC competition. In 2023, they were 79th in scoring offense vs. SEC competition.
If the Vols are in the hunt for back-to-back College Football Playoff births all season long in 2025, most of that will fall on the continued growth and quiet dominance of Banks’ unit. Even if Tennessee had former five-star quarterback Nico Iamaleava under center next season, Tennessee’s offense did not have the look, experience, and depth of a unit that was going to bring back memories of the 2022 season. A lot of young, blue-chip talent, to be sure, but even with Iamalaeava, every other position group on that side of the ball had lots of turnover. It could certainly be better than a season ago, especially at wideout if key blue-chip returnees like Mike Matthews and Braylon Staley remain healthy. However, there will also be four new starters on the offensive line and a new starter at running back. It’s one thing to just need one position group to pop after some turnover, like a year ago with the secondary. This season, Tennessee needs three position groups with a lot of turnover to pop simultaneously. It’s not impossible, just unlikely.
So a lot will fall on the Vols’ defense. That, I suspect, will be just fine for Tennessee, though. Sure, Pearce Jr. and Norman-Lott are gone, but if there is one position group to never worry about, it’s Rodney Garner and Levorn “Chop” Harbin’s defensive line. That being said, senior LEO Joshua Josephs does have a lot on his shoulders in 2025. The Vols were 10th in TFLs in FBS last season and 6th the year prior. However, without strong side defensive end Tyler Baron opposite Pearce Jr., the Vols’ 2024 sack numbers plummeted from 41 to 29. Georgia quarterback Carson Beck dropped back forty-plus times against the Vols and wasn’t put on the ground once. The Vols recorded zero sacks against the Buckeyes in the CFP beatdown in Columbus. What cushioned the dropoff in sack numbers from 2023 to 2024 was the addition of now-projected first-round pick Jermod McCoy at cornerback out of the transfer portal from Oregon State. McCoy, Rickey Gibson III, and Jalen McMurray, the Vols’ top three corners last season, all graded out in the top 100 cornerbacks in PFF for the 2024 season.
However, with McCoy’s uncertain availability status for the opener vs. Syracuse after suffering an offseason knee injury, along with a new starter at safety, youth at linebacker and two new starters on the interior of the defensive line, Tennessee may not be able to get away with a drop off in the sack department like they did a season ago and still be one of the best teams in the SEC next season. Tennessee should continue to flourish in the TFLs department, but if the secondary slips a bit, the Vols’ pass rush will have to pick up the slack like they did in 2023.
For Tennessee, I don’t think there is a more important player than Josephs next season. Josephs can absolutely be That Guy for Tennessee, too. This past week, PFF put out an impressive stat on Tennessee’s fourth-year edge: the North Cobb alum is the lone returning FBS edge to grade out at 85 or better in both run defense and pass rush grades in 2024. Josephs was a great run defender for the Vols and a good pass rusher. This season, Josephs has to become an elite pass rusher. That’s the final step for Josephs to take under Garner and Harbin. Josephs had just 1.5 sacks a season ago; he has just 5.5 total over the last three seasons. Behind him are other blue-chip guys like Caleb Herring, Jordan Ross, and Marion Dye. All extremely talented, all extremely unproven. For the second-straight season, Baron will not be across the line to help Pearce Jr. and Josephs. (Tennessee could really use a Tyre West breakout, too.)
All eyes nationally will continue to be on the quarterback position and the Tennessee offense next season. The Joey Aguilar vs. Jake Merklinger quarterback competition will be interesting to watch unfold. For myself, though, I think where Tennessee goes next season is where Josephs leads this defensive line. If he makes one final leap, that’s huge for the rest of the defensive line. It’s huge for the young linebackers. It’s huge for the secondary, too. In 2023, Pearce Jr. registered 10.5 sacks and took over games inside Neyland against South Carolina and Texas A&M. The Vols’ win-loss projection is at 8.5. I suspect that whether or not the Vols win nine or more games next season will have more to do with Josephs’ production on the defensive line, especially in key home games against Oklahoma and Georgia, than folks might be anticipating. The offense bringing back passing chunk plays would be welcome and important, but, man, the defense bringing back high sack totals behind a dominant Josephs strikes me as the most important.
Chase Thomas is Tennessee’s Sports Renaissance Man. He covers University of Tennessee athletics daily here at SRM. He’s also the host of ‘The Chase’ on FanRun Radio & FOX Sports Knoxville daily from 1-3 PM EST Mon-Fri and the host of ‘The Chase Thomas Podcast’, where he talks all things Vols every day, too. You can email him at chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.