Tennessee football: Vols top 30 players since 1998 national championship

Malik Jackson was one of the splash pickups for Derek Dooley his first offseason on Rocky Top. If you remember, the hire of Dooley was unpopular at first. But then he killed it in the press conference. Right after that, he still managed to sign a Top-10 recruiting class.

Then in the summer, things only got better for Tennessee football as the USC Trojans, who hired Lane Kiffin away from the Vols and set the program on fire, got slapped with two years’ probation. The Trojans had to vacate their 2004 national championship due to the Reggie Bush scandal. Immediately, the Vols joined everybody else in poaching USC players.

Jackson was one of those guys. A four-star weakside defensive end in the 2008 recruiting class, he had put on enough weight to become a defensive tackle. And in 2010, he transferred to Rocky Top to be eligible to play immediately.

Very few players who signed with Dooley early had a bigger impact. Playing in Justin Wilcox‘s system, Jackson lined up at defensive tackle and still managed 104 tackles through two years. That’s an insane number for a lineman. But it gets better. He also had seven and a half sacks those two years and 22 tackles for a loss overall.

These are incredible numbers and served as a prelude to his superstar NFL career, one in which he would help deliver a Super Bowl for Peyton Manning. Jackson had a forced fumble and even managed an interception on Rocky Top.

Simply put, while Dooley’s teams struggled, Jackson was a rare bright spot. He made All-SEC both years on Rocky Top and was an elite performer during that time. As a result, with only two years of production, he did enough to make this list.