Tennessee football: Top 10 former Vols in the NFL for 2018

Tennessee football NFL staples Peyton Manning and Jason Witten are gone. Here are the 10 former Volunteers likely to have the best NFL seasons in 2018.

We are about to enter our third NFL season with no Peyton Manning, which has hurt the league’s ratings more than anything else. Meanwhile Jason Witten is joining the Monday Night Football booth. But even without those guys, Tennessee football remains as recognizable as ever in the professional ranks.

Throughout the worst decade in school history, the Vols still continue to churn out NFL talent. Last year alone, they had the NFL offensive rookie of the year. They also had a defensive rookie make the game-saving play to win the Philadelphia Eagles the Super Bowl.

Simply put, Tennessee football came off its worst season ever and still managed to grab the attention of pro announcers. With three more guys going in this past year’s NFL Draft, their presence will only grow.

As we get set to take a look at the key Vols in the NFL for the 2018 season, it’s clear that the torch is being passed. The loss of Manning is still big, and it’ll be hard for them to ever match what they did in the 2000s coming off the players Phillip Fulmer recruited in the 1990s.

However, as you’ll see, there are still plenty of very good and even great players in the pro ranks from Rocky Top. In fact, you can look at the personnel and wonder how the Vols have struggled so much this decade.

They certainly had enough to finish in the Top 25 more than two years since 2008. But hey, that’s how things work. So let’s go ahead and break down the Vols in the pros. These are the Top 10 former Tennessee football players likely to have the best years in the NFL for 2018.