Tennessee must improve on defense to take next step as championship contender

The Tennessee Volunteers are looking to go from surprise contender to perennial College Football Playoff team moving forward.

Last season, Josh Heupel’s team was arguably the best in the country on the offensive side of the football, and there’s no reason to expect a big drop-off in 2023. However, On3’s JD PicKell is of the belief that the Volunteers’ defense will be the difference between another nice season, and a trip to the College Football Playoff.

In his latest edition of The Hard Count, PicKell elaborated on his point, believing that improvement on the defensive side of the football is paramount for the Volunteers.

“The big thing for Tennessee, this is nice and you’d like the offense to be explosive, but you saw the offense be explosive last year. A lot of good things happened, but now you set your sights on an SEC title, and getting back into that College Football Playoff conversation. That’s what Tennessee sees as the next step. They’re not here to be in the conversation. They want to actually make some noise here and get in the dance,” theorized PicKell. “The way that that happens is the defense gets about five to ten percent better.

“Depending on how much improvement you see on the defensive side of the football, I’m going to be real with you, I don’t know that you need to have 44 points per game offensively. It’d be nice. You’d like to see them live in that 40 points a game range, but the offense doesn’t need to be as good as it was last year. I mean, you’re scoring 40 points a game versus 44 points a game, you’re probably living in the same kind of world anyway. If the defense improves, that’s where things get exciting for Tennessee.”

While the defensive side of the football will be huge for Heupel’s squad in 2023, many are wondering if freshly-minted Tennessee starting quarterback Joe Milton will be able to replace Hendon Hooker’s play this season.

If Milton can play the way he did during Tennessee’s Orange Bowl victory, the Volunteers will be in good hands. Still, we’ve seen inconsistency out of the highly-talented quarterback throughout his college career, and it’s not a given he’ll perform for Heupel’s squad.

Tennessee could be a perennial contender under Josh Heupel, and 2023 will go a long way towards proving that. The defense will be under a ton of pressure, but so will Heupel’s quarterback, and that’s no small challenge.