THE STOCK REPORT
📈 Cooper Mays — The match up with Georgia’s defensive interior didn’t look like a good one for the Vols center, but the sophomore held his own against the likes of Jordan Davis. Mays wasn’t perfect. He made some mistakes in making calls and at times gave up too much grown, but he was by no means overwhelmed physically by the Bulldogs defensive front. 

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Redzone offense —Tennessee has just two touchdowns in their last six trips in the redzone gong back to the Kentucky game where they had a chance to put the game away and didn’t. Tennessee has big played teams to death all year but they need to be better in the redzone. The Vols first redzone trip against Georgia was a beauty but their next three trips netted just 3 points.

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The run game with the running backs —Josh Heupel likes to be balanced and wants to run the football. By the numbers he’s pretty balanced but that’s factoring in Hendon Hooker runs which some are designed and some are scrambles. The fact is Tennessee tailbacks have run the ball 30 times in two games this year. One was the season opener where the ran it the entire second half after Joe Milton couldn’t complete a ball and two was against Missouri where they were just trying to run out the clock. Will they call more runs this week with South Alabama coming to town?

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Cedric Tillman — Tillman has 46 catches for 725 yards and 6 touchdowns and has a catch of 20+ yards in six straight games. Tillman is the Vols go to guy in any situation. He’s made tough catches in traffic. He’s caught 50/50 balls. He’s ran past people. He continues to be a very complete receiver.

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Tennessee vs. mobile qb — Running quarterbacks have been the Achilles of this defense. Stetson Bennett was no differs as he rushed for 40 yards and a touchdown. It doesn’t matter who Tennessee is playing, the opposing quarterbacks feet whether it’s by design on a run or a scramble has given Tennessee fits.

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Tackles for loss —At one point this season, Tennessee was tops in the country in tackles for loss. But the last two weeks, those numbers have been off. The Vols had just 3 at Kentucky and just 2 against Georgia. For the year, the Vols have 75 TFL, but only five the last two weeks which is a big drop off in production. Can the Vols get back to their vertical defensive play this week and next as the competition level drops off