As Butch Jones signing days go, it was downright pedestrian. The University of Tennessee’s 2016 signing class, the latest members of Team 120 came in without the party atmosphere of recent years for good reason. This year’s crop of recruits was ranked No. 14 in the nation. It was Jones’ lowest ranking since his first season as head coach (No. 24). Last year Tennessee had the fourth best recruiting class in the country. The year before they were ranked No. 7.
Which isn’t to say this year’s class is chopped liver, as the kids no longer say. The Vols’ class is ranked higher than Notre Dame, Stanford, Baylor and Oklahoma. Tennessee signed 21 recruits, 10 of them four-star kids and the rest all three-star. led by safety Nigel Warrier, a 6-foot-, 186 prototype who could very well be the next Eric Berry. And that’s with two of Berry’s brother already on the team.
The 14th-ranking is just a preseason guess, obviously. Jones’ first team, recruited hard after he just got the job is the foundation of the Vols’ current good fortune, consecutive winning seasons and back-to-back bowl victories. To say Jones inherited a mess left over from the disastrous Derek Dooley hire is an understatement. Jones was handed a dumpster fire of ebola rat fetuses and a fan base that thought he should win the SEC East in year one.
Jones, entering his fourth season, will finally coach his team. With all but a small handful of fifth-year leftovers still on the roster. The time for a Tennessee jump is now, so there’ll be no more big preseason celebrations. Jones’ tenure is no longer about potential. It’s about results.
The Volunteers will enter the 2016 season so loaded with good players that Jones can actually consider redshirting some of these guys, especially at the skill positions. Something that in previous years would have been ridiculous even to suggest aloud as a joke.
Jones spent a lot of his recruiting capital on the offensive line and for good reason. The team Jones inherited from Dooley three seasons ago was devoid of talent up front. Dooley didn’t recruit a single offensive lineman in his final year at Tennessee. Not one. That’s what Jones had to deal with. Under Butch it was never going to happen again.
The crown jewel of this group then is Ryan Johnson out of Brentwood Academy in Brentwood, Tenn. near Nashville. Johnson is a four-star recruit, 6-foot-6 and 288 pounds. By the time the season starts in the fall, he’ll be at 300 and all 12 of the new pounds will be muscle. Marcus Tatum from Daytona Beach, Fla. and Nathan Niehaus are both three-star tackles, but either guy could move in to guard as both are in the 6-foot-6, 260-pound range.
With Alvin Kamara returning at running back and Cam Sutton at corner, the Vols didn’t have big skill position needs, but that didn’t keep the signees away. Having returning stars on a team like Tennessee’s can hurt during recruiting. One of the reasons Jones has been able to pull in Top 10 classes over the last two years is that the guys signing knew they’d not only have a chance to play, many of them would have a chance to start. Hell, plenty of them did.
But now the Vols are a team full of four and five-star sophomores and juniors and that’s going to be a tough roster to crack. If you’re a four or five-star guy and know you’re going to have to sit a year or two anyway, maybe that makes the call to go to Alabama or LSU that much easier. The fact that Jones was able to pull in a Top 14 class in spite of that says something. Not just about him and his staff, but about the perception nationally on where the Tennessee program is heading.
So which of these skill guys will you see on the field in 2016? Maquil Osborne and Desmond Henderson at corner will both see time. Both guys are junior college transfers and already enrolled in the school. They’ll go through spring practice and play in the spring game so barring injury or something crazy, both will see plenty of downs this season. Jeff George, a 6-foot-5 wideout from Dodge City Community College could fight his way into the starting rotation immediately too.
Maybe the most interesting incoming corner is Tyler Byrd from Naples, Fla. Byrd is a four-star recruit, 5-foot-11 and 194 pounds and had a standing offer from Miami he turned down to play at Tennessee and for Butch Jones. If nothing else tells you the culture has changed in his tenure with the Vols, that should.
