Three Tennessee Football Names To Know This Spring

Braylon Staley, William Satterwhite & Tyre West need to have a strong spring for the Vols.

Mar 09, 2025

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Tennessee football is back. Well, kinda. On Friday, head football coach Josh Heupel’s team was back on the practice field for their first day of spring practice. We still have a long way to go before the season opener in Atlanta at Mercedes-Benz Stadium against Syracuse on August 30, but it’ll be here before you know it. Just like the college football season always seems to be here one minute, gone the next, that is how it feels from the first day of spring practice up until the first regular season game.

There is a plethora of intriguing spring storylines for the Vols. As the spring continues, I suspect that I will write extensively about a whole lot of them. In today’s column, though, I wanted to highlight three Tennessee football names that I think may very well be the most important to know during spring practice.

Let’s dive in.

Braylon Staley, Wide Receiver

I suspect a lot of folks would have assumed that if I were to highlight a wide receiver to know this spring for Tennessee, it would be former five-star wideout and fellow Parkview alumni Mike Matthews. However, I have penciled in the former four-star recruit Staley here as one of my three key names to know this spring. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Tennessee’s two best seasons throwing the football came in the two seasons that the Vols had consistent, great production out of the slot.

In 2021, it was USC transfer Velus Jones Jr. The former Trojan was a first-team All-SEC player for the Vols in 2021. He had three games in 2021 where he had over 100 yards receiving – the Vols had zero games this past season where their slot receiver had over 100 yards receiving. Zero. In 2022, Jalin Hyatt had five games, nearly half the season, where he had over 100 receiving yards in the game. Tennessee was No. 1 in scoring nationally in 2022 and they were No. 7 in 2021. Last season, Squirrel White reeled in just 34 passes in the slot for the Vols. Jones Jr. reeled in 62 in 2021 and Hyatt reeled in 67 in 2022. The latter nearly doubled the production of what they got out of White, now at Florida State after entering the transfer portal this offseason, which played a role in the Vols’ issues in the passing game last season.

Yes, other factors also played a part in Tennessee’s passing game in 2024, but I think for Heupel’s offense to fire on all cylinders, the production out of the slot position has to be huge. Staley has the talent to thrive in the slot for the Vols in 2024, and while all eyes will be on Matthews on the outside, I think Staley is equally as important, if not more so, in the slot. If Staley is in the fifty-to-sixty catches range in 2025, I suspect Nico Iamaleava and the Vol passing attack will once again be one of the best in the country.

William Satterwhite, Center

With Andrej Karic off to the NFL, the Vols will have four new starters along the offensive line. Two of them seem obvious in transfers William Moe Jr. out of Arizona and Sam Pendleton out of Notre Dame. However, with Karic gone, it seems more likely that the two talented transfers are more likely to fill the guard spots rather than one of them filling the spot left vacant by four-year starter Cooper Mays. Redshirt freshman William Satterwhite is a former four-star recruit like Mays was coming out of Knoxville Catholic. Also, like Mays, he wasn’t thrown into the deep end his first year on Rocky Top and was able to watch and learn as a true freshman. With all the turnover along the offensive line this offseason, the opportunity is there for Satterwhite, or fellow redshirt freshman four-star Max Anderson, along with a couple of other players, to win the job as Mays’s replacement at center for the 2025 season. What you hope, if you’re a Vol fan or even if you’re Josh Heupel this spring, is that one of these redshirt freshmen will thrive and settle into the role, and you have your next potential four-year starter at an incredibly important position on this offense.

Tyre West, Defensive End

Tyre West has been at Tennessee for a while now. The former Tift County four-star SDE is now a senior on this football team. West is a former top-30 recruit nationally, and he started to flash at times in 2024 for Rodney Garner’s defensive line. He played just 201 snaps for the Vols last season behind Dominic Bailey and Jayson Jenkins in the rotation. The latter had a solid season for Tennessee, however, in nearly identical totals passing snaps – 110 for Jenkins, 102 for West. West had 17 total pressures, and Jenkins had 4, per PFF. West also had the best WIN% of the three in the rotation at SDE last season, per PFF. There is no question the Vols missed Tyler Baron and how he helped James Pearce Jr. on the defensive line last year. Baron graded out as the No. 2 pass rusher behind Pearce Jr. in 2023 for the Vols, and they totaled 16 sacks between them. This spring, I think West is a very interesting name to know because with Jenkins gone to Florida State and Bailey’s limitations as a pass rusher, the Vols could use a breakout senior season for West. If West is generating a lot of buzz this spring for Tennessee, that’s a sneaky important development for the Vols. With Pearce Jr. off to the NFL, the Vols have to get better pass-rush production at SDE in 2025 to take pressure off another senior in LEO Joshua Josephs, and West very well may be the best bet there.

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