Tennessee football signed seven offseason transfers and 22 freshmen enrollees for the upcoming season. We’ve already touched on the top 25 most important returning players from last year’s team, now let’s touch on who among these new additions could make an immediate impact for the Big Orange come fall.
Coming in at No. 12 is freshman receiver Kaleb Webb.
Old Ways
Kaleb Webb chose Tennessee just before the buzzer in December of 2021. Webb was a 4-star prospect who had a dazzling senior season of high school at McEachern in Georgia, a school that won the Region 2-7A title thanks in part to Webb.
That senior season helped him garner some interest throughout the country. Programs such as Ole Miss, South Carolina, Kentucky, Michigan and of course Tennessee came calling, but Webb decided to lay a little lower at first, committing to East Carolina.
The Pirates, for the time being, were getting a very solid football player in Webb. He was a rated as a four-star receiver, standing at 6-foot-3, 193 pounds and was ranked as the No. 46 receiver in the country. His senior season aforementioned is even more incredible when laid out – he caught 83 passes for over 1600 yards and 18 touchdowns on the season.
7A is the Peach State’s second highest classification and Webb was essentially M.I.A before his senior year. ‘Potential’ doesn’t even begin to describe what type of player he could be for Tennessee this season – he’s truly just getting started.
New Beginnings
It’s for this reason that Webb is a bit of a wild card. You can choose to look at his recent success through one of two lens. A pessimist would say he’ll have a tough time replicating what he did in high school ball against SEC defenses with so little experience being a high-caliber player.
But the optimist sees nothing but potential. If he had the jump he did from junior year to senior year, who’s to say what he could do from senior year to freshman year.
In reality, as most things are, it’s probably a mixture of the two. Webb is going to struggle to see the field other than on special teams in 2022. Not only do the Vols have a myriad of receivers in front of him on the depth chart, but receivers just have not had a history of contributing at Tennessee their freshman seasons – especially considering Webb is not the most promising freshman receiver on the team from a strictly outside looking in perspective (that honor would go to Marquarius ‘Squirrel’ White).
Not to mention, being a receiver in Josh Heupel’s offense is a wildly important job. The Cedric Tillaman, Jalin Hyatt and Bru McCoy’s of the world will have their work cut out for them to fill in the shoes of Velus Jones and JaVonta Payton.
Sophomore receiver Walker Merrill, Jimmy Holiday and Jimmy Calloway are all searching for a spot in a receiver corps that has some of the most fun jobs in the SEC this season, too.
All that to say, to see the field, Webb’s senior-freshman jump would have to be pretty otherworldly.
