NFL Draft: Tennessee Vols Shut Out is Actually Good News

For the second straight year, Tennessee football was shut out of the NFL Draft. But the reason no Volunteers were taken is actually good news.

The failure of the Derek Dooley era is officially over. As we mentioned on Friday, this NFL Draft is the last vestige of the dark past of the Vols over the past few years.

It finished with no Vols being taken in the 2016 NFL Draft. But there is some good news to come out of it.

A 9-4 team that finished ranked in the Top 25 but has no players drafted means that all of the significant talent is coming back. And that’s exactly the case of the Vols.

There was a chance going into last year that Alvin Kamara, Cameron Sutton, Jalen Reeves-Maybin, and maybe even a couple of offensive linemen could have declared early. Indeed, the first three players did file paperwork for the draft.

But they all decided to come back.

It’s also true that plenty of Vols good enough to play in the NFL right now were not eligible to be drafted. This includes Jalen Hurd, Josh Malone, and Derek Barnett.

But all of them are back for another year.

This is why no Vols drafted is good news. In this instance, it is due to the fact that all of the major weapons on the team are coming back.

If nobody is drafted in 2017, it will truly be a signal of failure. But nobody drafted in 2016 just alludes to how stacked the roster is going to be in the Fall.

Think about it another way. If John Calipari had a year in which no players were drafted, nobody would think anything negative of Kentucky. It would simply mean all of his players were coming back for a year along with another Top 5 recruiting class.

So do not worry about no Vols drafted in this class. It signals the end of a disastrous era and the ascension to the top of college football once again.

If nobody is drafted after 2016, then Vol Nation can begin to worry.