Before the Tennessee Football fan base had any faith in Josh Heupel, while he was still losing player after player to the transfer portal and picking up the pieces from a disaster program Jeremy Pruitt left, it was hard to land any talent. Elijah Herring was among the first to believe in the program.
Fast-forward more than two years later, and Herring, as a sophomore, finds himself in the starting lineup opposite Aaron Beasley while Keenen Pili is recovering from injury. Standing at 6’3″ 238 pounds, Herring registered four tackles against the Austin Peay Governors.
“I think I played pretty good,” Herring said of that game. “Can’t play perfect, but you still leave some stuff out on the field, hit (the film) next week and try to not make those mistakes again.”
All four tackles were assisted tackles, but the story of Herring was what he allowed Beasley to do, which was stay at his natural position, weakside linebacker. Last year, there were no true middle linebackers on the team, so Beasley played all year in that role.
This year, Pili was supposed to allow him to move over to the weak side, but he got hurt. Well, Herring proved he was ready to go, and while he didn’t make any splash plays, his reliability there allowed Beasley to have a historic game with five tackles for a loss and a sack.
“We hit it with the next-man-up mentality,” Herring said of being ready to go in place of Pili. “We just have to be prepared for anything that could happen, because it’s a long season, and anything could happen, so everyone needs to be prepared and ready to be the next man up.”
Hailing from Murfreesboro, Tenn., Herring was Heupel’s first ever four-year commitment, a member of the 2022 class who picked the Vols in April of 2021. A three-star, conventional wisdom was that he was recruited specifically so UT could land his brother, Caleb Herring, the next year.
Arion Carter, another in-state commitment, was a much bigger star at linebacker in the 2023 Tennessee Football recruiting class along with Caleb Herring. When Pili went down, the thought was that Carter would see the field first because of his potential, even if it meant moving Beasley back to the inside.
Instead, Herring saw the field first. Linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary said Herring took a lot of first team reps in spring ball because Pili only played half the time then. As a result, he said he though Herring would be ready to go when his name was called.
“We always coach them to say you’re one play away from being the starter or going from a third teamer to a second teamer, and that mentality really came out last week,” Jean-Mary said. “I thought Elijah did a great job. He got two wicked shots early in the first quarter that I didn’t know how he would bounce back from, and he came back. I thought he played very, very well.”
Herring had an even bigger role because he had to call the plays on defense, which is the job of the middle linebacker. That’s a huge ask for a sophomore, particularly one who wasn’t prepared to start at the beginning of the year.
Although it was just Austin Peay, Jean-Mary praised Herring’s communication. He said that having a veteran like Beasley helped, but he also noted that it could have been better at times. Some of that, Jean-Mary said, was about the formations Austin Peay was running
“They really test your communication and your ability to get lined up from the front end to the back end,” he said. “I thought he did a good job. Obviously, he could have been better, but for the most part it didn’t hurt us, but we really want him to be a lot more vocal this week and make sure we are all on the same page.”
Still, even with the mistakes, here’s a guy who stepped into one of the most difficult roles of the defense with very little fanfare. It was the same as when he committed to Heupel and the Vols way back in April, when many fans remained unhappy about the hire.
Now, Herring has a much more difficult task ahead of him, as Tennessee Football begins SEC play against the Florida Gators. Jean-Mary said it will be crucial for Herring to read his keys properly in this one and noted that he’s still learning. However, the defense responded well with him in the lineup.
“We take it one snap at a time and try to correct the mistakes we made on the field when we go back to the sideline,” Herring said of the unit. “We all talk about it, get it fixed, and then we move on to the next play.”
