Tennessee will be without Shawn Shamburger who should return next week at Georgia. Doneiko Slaughter is expected to start at the star position. Theo Jackson will back him up and if need be the Vols could slide Bryce Thompson into that role. Jaylen McCullough should start at safety and his return will help eliminate any communication issues/confusion.
Elsewhere, the hope a week ago, was to play the freshman receivers more, but they was some concern about how ready they were and the veterans played well early limiting some of the reps for the young guys. As it was told to us this week, the “young pups” are coming and will be more and more of a factor moving forward. With most of those guys missing two weeks in fall camp due to quarantine made it hard to have them ready to go week one even with a limited number of offensive plays to know.
Also we are told that quarterback Harrison Bailey is starting to settle in and last week was his best week to this point. Now, don’t get all worked up. This is JG’s offense and Bailey isn’t the back up at this point. But the freshman who missed a good bit of fall camp and had limited reps when he returned to practice is getting a better grasp on things.
Darel Middleton will play on Saturday. How much is unknown, but he is available. The question is what kind of shape is he in. Senior Aubrey Solomon looked like he has a ways to go on Saturday condition wise. Solomon only did individual drills in fall camp and as a result played a limited number of snaps at South Carolina. Middleton, when he’s been able to practice has done more contact work than Solomon, so the thought is that Middleton is in better shape than his teammate.
We expect Jeremy Banks to get the start at inside linebacker and look for Tyler Baron to get more work off the edge this week. Baron gave a good account of himself last week.
