The Vols haven’t put up numbers like this since before the Lane Kiffin/Tennessee tryst of 2009.
Defensive numbers, that is.
Well, offensive numbers too. Those are silly. Some of them go back more than 30 years (249 points in the first six games, the most since UT had 253 in the first six of its SEC championship season of 1990) and some back to … never (28 points in consecutive first quarters). But this 4-2 start to Josh Heupel’s debut season, this momentum that will be manifested in a sold-out Neyland Stadium for Saturday night’s showdown with Kiffin and No. 13 Ole Miss, owes plenty to Tim Banks’ defense too. It has 52 tackles for loss, tops in the SEC and the Power 5, second only in the FBS to Troy’s 59, and the most for Tennessee through six games of a season since at least 2008.
“We’ve always had the guys,” UT senior cornerback Alontae Taylor told The Athletic this week. “We’ve always had the people to be one of the top defenses in the country. We just had to find a way to make it click.”
And this is a good time to talk about that, maybe even click a picture or two, because the progress of that defense may not be as easy to identify in a month. The Vols (2-1 SEC) travel to No. 5 Alabama and No. 11 Kentucky next, then host No. 1 Georgia to wrap up a tidy quartet of opponents with the potential to ugly up some stats and hurt some feelings.
Proclaiming this a good, or even significantly improved defense from 2020 at this moment would be like doing a dinner review on the salad. It’s actually unfair to the defense from Jeremy Pruitt’s miserable last season to compare numbers, because that was an all-SEC schedule.
