Tennessee football: Midseason awards for 2019 Vols

Comeback Player of the Year

Brandon Kennedy; Offensive lineman

Redshirt junior; 6’3″ 301 pounds; Wetumpka, Ala.

A pair of Tennessee football offensive linemen were in the fight for this award. Trey Smith almost made it. Blood clots in his lungs returned when November hit last year, so he had to miss the last month of the season. He is still playing but doing in on a week-to-week basis, and in the process of doing that, he had to move back inside from tackle to guard this year.

However, while Smith deserves praise, Brandon Kennedy’s return has been a huge deal for the Vols. Last year, he suffered a season-ending injury in the opener against the West Virginia Mountaineers, and without him, the Vols had a historically bad offensive line.

That line has shown dramatic improvement on a weekly basis this year as Kennedy got more and more acclimated to playing again. The Alabama Crimson Tide transfer has started every game this season at center, and he’s been a part of the huge improvement.

It all came together last week. Jeremy Pruitt decided that the Vols, up in a defensive struggle, should stick to the ground game and play conservative. Kennedy did a perfect job executing Jim Chaney’s calls in the process, and it was a huge reason UT was able to control the clock and the tempo of the game.

If the season was back in Week Three, we would not have Kennedy on this list. He was part of an interior line that was struggling severely early on, and him being out of football shape likely had something to do with that. But over the last few games, he has really emerged, and as a result, the entire interior line has taken a major leap.