Five-star offensive tackle Trey Smith is heading to Tennessee, but will he buck the trend of Butch Jones’ issues with developing players?
Derek Barnett leaves the Tennessee Volunteers with a wake of destruction and a place in the record books in Knoxville behind him. In their Music City Bowl victory over the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Barnett earned his 33rd career sack for the Vols, vaulting him past an all-time great, Reggie White, for the career record at Tennessee. Now, Barnett is eyeing a sure-fire first-round selection in the 2017 NFL Draft, potentially creeping into the top 15.
All of this, however, comes after Barnett was just a four-star recruit in 2014, ranked outside of the top 200 according to the 24/7 Sports Composite rankings, and just barely cracking the top five recruits in the state of Tennessee. While that certainly is an impressive feat for Vols head coach Butch Jones to identify that talent and cultivate it with a four-star talent, Barnett’s situation and progression stand in stark contrast to what appears to be an increasingly dire problem in Knoxville.
Butch Jones is earning the label of a college football coach unable to develop his best recruits. That’s not to say that he doesn’t develop all players well as 2017 draft prospects like Barnett, Cameron Sutton, and Jalen Reeves-Maybin can all attest to. However, the recruits that Jones does bring to Tennessee have an alarmingly low success rate of panning out.
In the class that brought in Barnett to the Volunteers program in 2014, there were four recruits ranked in the 24/7 Composite Top 100 that signed to play for Jones and the Volunteers. Josh Malone, Jalen Hurd, Todd Kelly Jr., and Dillon Bates all joined Barnett in taking their talents to Neyland Stadium that year. However, it’s a bit damning that, of the quartet ranked in the top 100, only Malone truly has even the potential of reaching his hype as a high school recruit. And again, that Barnett surpassed them all by such a wide margin is also quite telling.
Unfortunately for Jones and Tennessee, this has become somewhat of a trend. It’s one of the reasons that many will point to regarding the 2016 season for the Vols. Expected to return to their former glory of National Championship contention, the Volunteers faltered and fell short. While injuries played a role, the fact that players—Hurd in particular—turned on Jones and underperformed largely on the field did not bode well for Jones.
However, the intriguing wrinkle in Jones’ developing reputation as a coach unable to develop talent is the fact that he remains a quality recruiter. Evidence of that can be found in the top 15 of the 24/7 Composite where you’ll find offensive tackle Trey Smith at No. 14.
Rated as the a five-star talent, the fourth-best tackle among 2017 recruits and the top overall prospect out of Tennessee, Smith boasts a ton of promise. Measuring in at 6-5, 310 pounds with remarkably polished technique for an incoming freshman, Smith has all of the qualities that you look for in a potential stud at the position. But given the situation that he’s walking into, the bigger question is if he’ll be one to buck the concerning trend with Jones’ player development at Tennessee.
Working in Jones’ favor is the simple notion that Smith is a polished enough prospect already that he can contribute immediately. If the University School of Jackson product isn’t on the field as a true freshman—particularly after enrolling in Knoxville in early January—it would be more shocking than not. However, that doesn’t eliminate the need for Jones to help him adjust to the speed and nuances of the college game, grow in terms of his technique, strength and technique, and just simply making him a better overall player.
If Smith’s development were to go ideally for Jones and the Volunteers, there’s every reason to believe that he could eventually be a first-round caliber talent in the NFL draft. Of course, the same has been said of many other highly touted recruits all over the field that have made their way to Tennessee. And yet Barnett is the best player to come out of Tennessee since Jones’ arrival in 2012.
Jones’ future in Knoxville isn’t in question, or at least not immediately so. By all accounts and despite his shortcomings, he has the program heading in a positive direction. That they were even in the conversation to return to title contention in 2016 is a change for the better for the Volunteers. However, this program isn’t going to remain in that conversation if Jones continues to fail in regards to properly developing the players and recruits that are supposed to be his biggest gets and contributors.
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Proving that he can indeed do that now largely falls on what happens with Smith. There will be flashes from Smith in Knoxville immediately that a novice coach could pull out of him, simply based off of talent. But Jones needs his prize recruit in the 2017 class to become elite. In the end, that all falls on the head coach—and his long-term future with the Vols may hinge on his ability to make it happen.