Tennessee football has gone with the same starting offensive line in each of its games this season. But they’re making a change on Saturday night at Kentucky, giving freshman right tackle David Sanders Jr his first career start. Sanders missed time early in the season before making his debut against Mississippi State.
Even after making his debut, Tennessee only played Sanders off the bench. After a strong game against Alabama, Sanders slides into the starting lineup. The Vols moved right tackle Jesse Perry to right guard, Wendell Moe Jr. to left guard and bumped Sam Umarov from the starting lineup.
When the Vols took the field on offense for the first time in Lexington, UT’s front five featured Lance Heard, Wendell Moe Jr, Sam Pendelton, Jessy Perry and David Sanders from right to left.
That doesn’t mean the lineup will stay the same the whole game. Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel noted that the plan is still to rotate up front heading into the game.
“Yeah, continuity does matter,” Heupel said. “The positions that guys played in, that’s how they trained. Your offensive line, very rarely in a given year are five guys going to start and play every rep all year long. And so they cross-trained at different spots. And getting David (Sanders) back allows us the ability to move those guys around a little bit. I do think they have comfort in playing different spots, and communication is solid. Ultimately, there’s a couple of things that we got to do a little bit better. I don’t think that’s directly correlated to guys moving. I think it’s just timing and how we executed it.”
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Last week in the loss to Alabama, eight linemen saw the field. Here’s the snap breakdown, although it’s important to note that Heard was replaced by Bennett Warren due to injury and not rotation.
Left Tackle
- Lance Heard – 79 snaps (79 total)
- Bennett Warren – 6 snaps (6 total)
Left Guard
- Shamurad Umarov – 50 snaps (50 total)
- Wendell Moe Jr. – 35 snaps (85 total)
Center
- Sam Pendleton – 82 snaps (82 total)
- William Satterwhite – 3 snaps (3 total)
Right Guard
- Wendell Moe Jr. – 50 snaps (85 total)
- Jesse Perry – 35 snaps (81 total)
Right Tackle
- David Sanders Jr. – 49 snaps (49 total)
- Jesse Perry – 36 snaps (81 total)
