Terrific Tennessee Tuesday: Tyre West

The Vols' senior SDE Tyre West came up huge for Tennessee vs. Mississippi State.

Credit: Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics

Throughout last season, I talked and wrote about how much it seemed like Tennessee really missed Tyler Baron opposite of James Pearce Jr. Defensive coordinator Tim Banks’ unit finished 46th in sacks per game last season. In 2023, the Vols finished 9th in sacks per game. Pearce Jr., Omarr Norman-Lott, and Omari Thomas all returned last season, except for Baron, who ultimately wound up at Miami, where he put up nearly identical production he had at Tennessee the previous season. Before this season, 2023 was the only season in which the Vols under Banks finished in the top-10 in FBS in sacks. Baron had six sacks and 11 TFLs for the Vols in 2023 and had 5.5 sacks and 11 TFLs for the Hurricanes in 2024. It all felt silly at the time, and still does to this day, that Baron did not complete his college football career alongside Pearce Jr., a devastating duo that accounted for 16 sacks between just the two of them in 2023.

Baron’s absence on the Tennessee defensive line did not show up every week, as the Vols still went 10-2 in the regular season and had a defense ranked in the top-10 in opponent scoring. His absence did show up on the big stage, though, like in Athens, where Carson Beck dropped back to pass forty-plus times and was not sacked or hit once. This, of course, came the week after Ole Miss and defensive coordinator Pete Goulding’s unit sacked Beck five times in their upset victory over Georgia.

This 2025 defensive line feels a lot more like that 2023 defensive line. A big reason for that is senior Tyre West, who was dominant on the big stage once again for Tennessee. (Same for LEO Caleb Herring, who has four sacks in two SEC games this season.) Through five games, West is already halfway to Baron’s 2023 sack total and had the defensive play of the game for the Vols against Mississippi State on Saturday afternoon when he crushed Bulldog quarterback Blake Shapen, which resulted in a scoop-and-score touchdown by Joshua Josephs to flip the momentum of the ball game. West had two sacks total and was a big-time disruptor across from the LEOs Josephs and Herring all afternoon.

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Tennessee’s defense is not going to be in the top-10 in scoring by the end of the season, I think it’s fair to presume. The Vols are 95th in scoring defense vs. Power 4 competition this season. To have won both SEC games, they would have had to score at least 80 combined points. Tennessee needed to have a top-10 scoring defense to win double-digit games and make the College Football Playoff a season ago. Last season, the Vol offense went nearly a month without scoring in the first half — it was rough. This year, the offense ranks 4th in scoring versus P4 competition.