Vols : Who Is Most Improved Player?

By Randy Sharber | Aug 19, 2015

The Vols must have improvement team wide to live up to the hype and expectations going into the 2015 season.

The Vols seemed “set to threat” for the Eastern Division crown of the SEC for the first time in what seems like a million years to Vols fans. Recently the East has been dominated by surprising Missouri and the always consistent Georgia Bulldogs. Tennessee has been a distant fourth, even behind some bad Florida teams as of late. But that could change this season. Quite frankly, it should change.

Coach Butch Jones has stockpiled talent over the past two recruiting classes like chord wood. The Vols have four and five star guys all over the field now. It was evident at last Saturday’s open practice. An estimated 40,000 fans watched Tennessee go through their practice drills that evening. I was one of those in attendance.

I can say for sure, having attended the last open practice, that Tennessee is a much better team athletically. They now look the part of an SEC team. Two years ago I came away extremely depressed. I told everyone I could not see them winning more than 4-5 games. That is what happened. They had no size and they had no speed. That is a terrible combination in the SEC. That is a bad combination anywhere.

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All you have to do is look at the Vols defensive line to see what improvement has been made on The Hill. It is ridiculous. Night and Day from last season. Freshman Khalil McKenzie is hard to look away from. I wanted to watch the quarterbacks, but could not take my eyes off of McKenzie. I have never seen anything quite like this guy.

Freshmen Shy Tuttle and and Kyle Phillips are extremely impressive as well. Throw in what looks to be an NFL ready Derek Barnett and Curt Maggitt and this line looks incredible. However the Vols can go deeper than that with big time defensive lineman like Owen Williams, Danny O’Brien, Andrew Butcher, Corey Vereen, Kendall Vickers, Dimarya Mixon and Quay Picou. It is a sight to see.

But a much smaller, faster guy caught my eye during practice. It was this player that I thought on defense had made the biggest stride of improvement from last season. Granted, it was one practice. I don’t have a lot to judge. Heck, I don’t know if I have a right to judge, but I will anyway. That player is defensive corner Emmanuel Moseley.

Moseley played a lot for Tennessee last season as a freshman from North Carolina. It was easy to see that he had the speed to keep up with any receiver in the conference. It was also evident that he was possibly the slightest cornerback in the SEC. He did not weigh much more than 160 pounds.

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Emmanuel is up to 179 pounds now, and looks even faster. During one on one drills at practice Coach Butch Jones matched Moseley on dynamic receiver Von Pearson. Pearson looks fantastic as well by the way. Moseley calmly creeped up to Pearson facemask to facemask, and blanketed the receiver wherever he went. It looked effortless. Honestly he looked as good as Cam Sutton on this day.

Now I don’t know if Moseley can tackle from the corner. I don’t know how well he recognizes routes and how well he knows where he is supposed to be in what coverages. But I can tell you this much, let him match up with any speedy receiver you have one on one, and that receiver will be blanketed. It doesn’t mean that receiver won’t make the catch since he is 5’11”, but he will be there to defend it anyway.

As stated earlier, Tennessee must get better at every position in order to compete in the SEC. They need guys like Moseley ( a two star recruit for most of the recruiting process ) to get better. They need everyone to get better.

I saw a tremendous amount of improvement Saturday, but none more than Emmanuel Moseley. This is an encouraging sign of good things to come for this secondary. It is an encouraging sign for the entire Tennessee defense.

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