Greg McElroy ranks Tennessee in Preseason Top-25 Poll: ‘They might come back to earth’

Many want to see how Tennessee builds off of what they did last season based on how they perform in 2023. Some see them back competing for a spot in the Top-10. Others wonder whether they will regress after a historic campaign for their program.

For Greg McElroy, he has them somewhere in the middle. In a segment on ‘Always College Football’, McElroy named the Volunteers at No. 18 overall in his preseason Top-25. In his mind, he just sees a scenario where, although Tennessee is good, it becomes much harder to replace their quarterback, receivers, and a few offensive linemen than anticipated.

“I think they might come back to earth just a little bit,” McElroy said. “Not to the extent in which they’re going to fall off the face of the earth. But I do believe the Tennessee Volunteers are poised for maybe just a little bit of a correction based on what they did last season.”

“Now, I love Joe Milton’s arm talent. I think he played great in the bowl game, I think he played great versus Vanderbilt. I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll play great all season long this year. But there are questions for me,” continued McElroy. “You lose the Biletnikoff Award-winning wide receiver, you also lose another big body receiver. I know he wasn’t always available last year. But, either way, this was a crazy good wide receiver corps. And an offensive line, too, that I think was really underappreciated. Now they lose their top-two offensive linemen, another situation that I don’t think is necessarily going to be super easy to replace.”

Even so, they were obviously skilled enough in some phases of the game to still be one of McElroy’s top teams heading into the season. That starts with their offensive weapons through the air and on the ground. He also credited Tennessee’s defense for making a jump last year where he feels as though they could be serviceable again.

“I do think, though, they have some good pieces offensively. Bru McCoy? I think he’s got All-American potential. I really believe that,” said McElroy. “You bring back Squirrel White, who I think is really solid as well. Great speed. And then you have some really solid running backs in Jabari Small, Jaylen Wright, Dylan Sampson. That’s a trio of very solid pieces…This will be a group that has some firepower.”

“And then, on the defensive side, there were notable improvements from ’21 to ’22,” added McElroy. “I think they’ve got a chance to be pretty dang good on the defensive side.”

Tennessee posted one of their best seasons of all time for the first time in a while in 2022. However, as far as 2023 goes, McElroy believes it will just be a quality follow-up rather than a finish that is an equal to last fall.

“I think the team is going to be around 9-3 this year. Georgia’s going to be tough naturally, ‘Bama’s going to be tough naturally. There will be a few other games on the schedule that will be very difficult for the Vols,” McElroy said. “But, either way, I think 9-3 following up and further justifying how good last year’s season was is one heck of a (year).”