Tennessee football: Top 10 potential dark-horse Vols for 2018 season

He hasn’t been in the news recently, including in the past two scrimmages. But Tennessee football is desperately looking for help at the cornerback position. Meanwhile, D.J. Henderson is a senior with plenty of experience playing college ball.

Taking that into account, you would have to think he would have been a favorite to become a starter, right? After all, the once three-star junior college transfer committed to Butch Jones with a lot of promise. Now, entering his senior year, the cornerback position being wide open should be working in his favor.

However, at this point, he hasn’t appeared to have much of an impact. And with no conversations really taking shape about him, he’s a surprising dark-horse. There’s no reason to believe that Henderson is not as much in the hunt to see action at defensive back as everybody else is there. Jeremy Pruitt and Kevin Sherrer have a ton of work to find out who can actually play at cornerback, and Henderson may be one of those guys.

Last year, Henderson saw action in 11 games, despite never starting. As a backup, the 5’11” 179-pound senior made six tackles on the season. So he has as many qualifications to start at cornerback as most of the other people on the roster when you pay attention to their experience at this level.

This year, under a new scheme, he could be the shocking starter at cornerback we didn’t see coming. Why not him compared to everybody else? Unfortunately for Henderson, that applies to a lot of people, including the next player on this list.