Given the fact that we are honoring great Tennessee football players, we try our best not to include guys who left early for the pros. Antonio Richardson, however, is among those players exempt from that criteria. Sure, he never played on a winning team for Rocky Top, but he was an elite tackle for three years, and we couldn’t ignore that.
Richardson was so good that he garnered All-SEC honors in Jim Chaney’s pro-style and then in Butch Jones’s spread offense. The transition did not slow him down at all, as he was consistently the most reliable player up front while he was on Rocky Top.
One of Richardson’s most famous performances came in 2012. In a shootout, he was tasked with blocking Jadeveon Clowney. He shut down Clowney for the entire game, but as the Vols were driving late for a potential game-winning touchdown, Clowney finally got the best of him, strip-sacking Tyler Bray to secure the win. Still, his play for that game earned national recognition.
The next year, Richardson was the key reason for the Vols as a team having 2,261 yards on the ground, the most the school had since 2004 at that time. After he left early for the pros, his absence was noticeable in 2014. Injuries limited what he did at the next level, but his college play was incredible. Those three years earned him a spot on this list.