Tennessee football: Vols top 30 players since 1998 national championship
A recent addition to the list, Derek Barnett now has a case to make to be one of the top-10 Tennessee football players of all time. His three years on Rocky Top were marked by production that we haven’t seen in the modern era.
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Barnett was a four-star member of Butch Jones’s elite 2014 recruiting class that everybody seemed to love at the time. But he was one guy who was indeed going to produce, and he did so early on.
Immediately, Barnett burst onto the scene with over 20 tackles for a loss and 10 sacks as a freshman. That was just the start.
He followed that up with 10 more sacks as a sophomore. As a junior, he registered 13 sacks. That was enough to break Reggie White‘s school record of 32 sacks by one, and White started for four years.
In addition to breaking White’s sacks record, Barnett had 198 total tackles, 52 tackles for a loss, three forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries, six pass deflections and even an interception.
His best year was obviously that final year when he had 19 tackles for a loss to go along with those sacks, two forced fumbles, five of those pass deflections and that interception.
But what stood out more than the stats was Barnett’s ability to show up in big games. Of his 33 sacks, 29 came against SEC teams. Three more came against ranked non-conference opponents, two of which were in bowl games. He registered at least one sack in 22 of the 30 games he played against Power 5 opponents through those three years, including every SEC game in 2016.
The rivalry games were more impressive. Barnett had two sacks in 2016 against the Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs each. He even had a strip-sack that was recovered for a touchdown to give the Vols a late lead at Georgia after being down, 17-0. Simply put, the guy always performed his best on the biggest stage.
As a result, it was no surprise to Tennessee football fans that when the Philadelphia Eagles drafted him, he managed to recover the game-winning fumble in the Super Bowl to win it. That’s what Barnett does. Everybody saw it on Rocky Top. It’s why he’s one of the greatest players to ever play for UT.