Tennessee football coach Josh Heupel acknowledged that defensive lineman Daevin Hobbs suffered a foot injury last week during his Tuesday press conference. Volquest’s Brent Hubbs first reported the injury on Friday with sources confirming to RTI.
Heupel failed to detail how much time Hobbs will miss with the injury but the expectation is that he will miss the first few weeks of the season.
Hobbs loss is a significant one for numerous reasons. First, the junior appeared poised for a breakout season. He’s battled injuries while earning playing time in each of his first two years in Knoxville. But the former five-star recruit had been fully healthy all of camp and had the potential to be Tennessee’s best interior defensive lineman.
But the loss hurts just as much because of the lack of depth that Tennessee’s has at defensive tackle. Bryson Eason and Jaxson Moi have proved they are solid SEC players, but the Vols don’t have any other defensive tackles that have played serious snaps at the division one level.
The Vols have a group of returners and newcomers that were already battling for Tennessee’s fourth defensive tackle spot. That competition becomes all the more important with two spots open in the two-deep for the time being.
“Those guys have done a really good job,” Heupel said of the young defensive tackles. “You look at where they were in January when they got here. The player that they were in spring ball dealing with the growth of what they’re doing here in training camp.
“Ethan Utley is explosive. Is playing twitchy at the line of scrimmage and doing a good job at the point of attack. Isaiah Campbell has a wide hip but is strong with explosive power. All those guys continue to grow in a really good way.”
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Jamal Wallace is a former JUCO transfer who is a gifted athlete but is still learning the details of playing defensive tackle according to Garner. Nathan Robinson is a third year player who has played very few snaps, let alone meaningful ones, in his college career.
Junior college transfer Josh Schnell is another body in that room but he doesn’t physically look capable of playing defensive tackle in the SEC.
Blue-chip freshmen Ethan Utley and Isaiah Campbell do look physically ready to play in the SEC and Tennessee might need one, if not both, to emerge as legit contributors. But asking true freshmen to play significant snaps at defensive tackle in the SEC is an incredibly difficult ask.
“Just the level of competition, the strain that’s involved,” Tennessee defensive line coach Rodney Garner said of making the jump from high school to college. “It’s just like we were talking yesterday, they can never become great and stay comfortable. So, they got to get themselves comfortable being uncomfortable right now so they can be comfortable later. So those are the things that I am trying to put into them, put them in difficult situations, so strain them so that good stuff can come out.”
Tennessee’s defensive tackle rotation will be one of the most interesting storylines to watch in the Vols’ season opener against Syracuse in Atlanta.
