The Tennessee Vols are expecting to compete for a spot in the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff in 2024 after going 9-4 this past season.
After going 11-2 in 2022, the Vols took a small step back last season thanks mostly to losing a significant amount of talent to the NFL (Hendon Hooker, Darnell Wright, Jalin Hyatt, Byron Young, Cedric Tillman).
The feeling among Tennessee fans is that the Vols, with highly-touted quarterback Nico Iamaleava under center, will be ready to take a big step forward in 2024.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly, however, disagrees.
Connelly put together his “returning production” rankings this week. And according to him, Tennessee is No. 94 in the nation in returning production in 2024.
Because of those results, Connelly thinks Tennessee is one of the college football programs that’s “most likely to regress” this fall.
From ESPN : Tennessee was all over the place in 2023, losing to three SP+ top-10 teams by an average score of 36-12 but otherwise going 9-1 with mostly comfortable wins. It was a bit of a reloading year after 2022’s 11-win breakthrough, but it appears 2024 might require further reloading. Everyone’s excited about the possibilities of blue-chip quarterback Nico Iamaleava replacing the outgoing Joe Milton III, but that will still produce a drop in experience levels, and despite the addition of explosive Tulane receiver Chris Brazzell II, the skill corps, defensive line and secondary will all start the 2024 season relatively unproven thanks to both NFL departures and transfers.