Conventional wisdom was Tennessee had one of the best defensive lines in college football this past year. It was seemingly due to a combination of James Pearce Jr.’s elite talent as an edge rusher and the incredible depth on the interior that allowed Rodney Garner to rotate up to 10 players.
That depth may have held some guys back, though.
While Omari Thomas was the leader of the unit and Pearce was always a projected NFL star, Elijah Simmons and Omarr Norman-Lott seem to be getting way more praise for their NFL potential than many would have expected. Scouts have fallen in love with both and publicly commented on one.
Simmons, who had 11 tackles and one and a half tackles for a loss this past season, shockingly received an invite to the NFL Combine. At 6’2″ 340 pounds, his raw potential as a nose tackle in the right system is through the roof, but his production this past year didn’t seem to warrant that invite.
Norman-Lott, who had 18 tackles, four tackles for a loss, four sacks and three quarterback hurries this past season, is playing in the Senior Bowl, has reportedly drawn interest from the Pittsburgh Steelers already. Zach Lyon of 104.5 The Zone reported on Cover 2 with Blaine and Zach that many analysts at the Senior Bowl believe Norman-Lott was wasted.
So where does this come from? How could two defensive tackles look way better now than they did while playing for the Vols? Well, it goes back to that system Garner, Tim Banks and Josh Heupel ran, rotating so many players to make sure they were always fresh late in games.
Are we sure that was a good idea?
Look, depth and rotating a lot of guys is always something you want to do on the defensive line, but you also want to maximize what your best players can do. It’s similar to basketball. Sure, going 10-deep is great, but you don’t want to reduce the minutes of your top scorers in big games just for depth.
There’s a reason Dean Smith was called the only person who could stop Michael Jordan.
Tennessee’s defensive line unit this past year was significantly deeper than the 1998 and 2001 defensive lines. Nobody would accuse it of being better than those lines, though, because nothing could replace a Shaun Ellis in 1998 or a John Henderson and Albert Haynesworth in 2001.
Simply put, the reliance on depth may have limited what they could have gotten out of their best players. Now, it’s possible the guys coming up into the pros after next year, like Bryson Eason and Jaxson Moi, are just as good, so it made sense to use all of them.
However, the philosophy of running in and out a lot of guys seemed to outweigh that. Did you notice that “depth” didn’t matter when the Vols visited the Georgia Bulldogs and Ohio State Buckeyes? They couldn’t get pressure without blitzing, and they didn’t blitz a lot, and by the time depth would have mattered in OSU, the game was in hand. Sometimes, talent just matters more.
