The defense is typically ahead of the offense in preseason scrimmages, and it doesn't matter which school you're talking about.

But given Tennessee's youth and inexperience on offense this season, it's hardly a surprise that the defense dominated Saturday in the Vols' third major scrimmage of the preseason.

The defense collected five interceptions, four of those thrown by freshman Tyler Bray, and coach Derek Dooley acknowledged afterward that it was a tough day for the offense.

"Our youth and inexperience were really exposed today, and we need a ton of work at this stuff," Dooley said. "We got affected a lot. We couldn't manage the offense as well as we need to. We made some bad mistakes, so it was really a good indicator, I think, of where we were when it got to crunch time. Youth and inexperience just showed."

Not that there was ever really a question coming into the preseason, but Matt Simms further entrenched himself as the Vols' starting quarterback. He's done a nice job of protecting the ball this preseason and has only thrown one interception, which will be vitally important for Tennessee this season.

The Vols did get sophomore safety Janzen Jackson back after he missed more than a week with a hamstring problem. Dooley said it was obvious that Jackson was behind mentally. Also, freshman receiver Justin Hunter, who's been impressive this preseason, missed the scrimmage while waiting for an online class to be certified by the NCAA Eligibility Center.

This Tennessee defense under first-year coordinator Justin Wilcox isn't going to be shy about showing different looks and coming from all sorts of different angles this season. Some of that will be to disguise some deficiencies on defense, but that's also the way Wilcox likes to play.

Here's a report on the Vols' scrimmage thanks to the Tennessee sports information staff. It was a situational scrimmage, so no stats were recorded.