Nick Saban cites explosive plays, defense as biggest questions for Tennessee in 2024

With head coach Josh Heupel at the helm, Tennessee always has a dangerous offense. However, on Tuesday, former Alabama head coach Nick Saban questioned if the other areas of Tennessee’s team can carry their weight.

“I think that’s the key to the drill. Can their skill players, with their quarterback, make those kind of explosive plays?” Saban said. “Because when they spread you out the way they do, and they can make those vertical plays down the field — which they killed us with a couple years ago when they beat us — because they’re gonna get their best player matched up on your safety because you’re spread out so much. And then that enhances their ability to run the ball.

“The question is, though, can they play and continue to improve on defense? Because that’s an area where they made tremendous progress in the last few years.”

Tennessee had the No. 19 offense in the country last season, averaging 448.1 yards per game. However, it’s defense was slightly worse, allowing 335.2 yards per game, which ranked No. 32 in the nation.

Nonetheless, Tennessee’s defense has a chance to be much-improved this season with 58% of its production from last season returning, per ESPN. In comparison, the Volunteers’ offense will only 46% of its production back for the upcoming season.

The majority of Tennessee’s fresh faces will be in its secondary. The Volunteers lost 10 defensive backs this offseason, including seven to the transfer portal and three to the NFL Draft.

In turn, Tennessee hit the transfer portal hard, adding cornerback Jermod McCoy (Oregon State), cornerback Jalen McMurray (Temple) and safety Jakobe Thomas (Middle Tennessee). Earlier this offseason, Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks revealed how his unit is progressing.

“It’s a new group,” Banks said in March. “Where you might have had some liabilities and you have to play a certain way to help some guys showcase what they can do to help the defense, we’re kind of learning that this spring with all the newcomers and what their strengths are and how we can make sure we’re playing to their strength. Overall, we obviously want to be a little bit better in a low red zone, that’s one of the things that we identified that we think we can be better.

“We like our scheme, we just have some things that we obviously need to be able to tweak and help us grow in that way. It’s a long list of things, no different than we talked about James (Peace Jr.). Every year we’re trying to grow and get a little bit better defensively. We’ll know a little bit more about our personnel and then we’ll obviously make adjustments moving forward.”