Tennessee football: Ranking NFL careers of six Vols previously drafted by Seahawks

Six former Tennessee football players were drafted by the Seattle Seahawks before Darrell Taylor. Here is a ranking of those Volunteers’ pro careers.

On its face, Darrell Taylor appears to be going to a good situation. The Seattle Seahawks traded up to get the former Tennessee football edge rusher in the second round, so they are heavily invested in him becoming successful.

Taylor is also the highest drafted Vol ever by the Seahawks in addition to being the highest drafted Vol in the 2020 NFL Draft class, and he’s the seventh player overall from Rocky Top to be taken by the organization, which dates back to 1977. Taking that into account, it’s safe to say he’s coming in with pretty high expectations.

Given the success of Seattle in recent history, that bar is even set higher given where he was drafted. But in terms of Tennessee football players drafted by Seattle, what exactly is he needing to live up to?

In this post, we’re going to look at the shoes Taylor is filling by ranking the pro careers of former Vols drafted by the Seahawks. To make this list, they can’t have signed with the Seahawks as undrafted free agents. That eliminates guys like Justin Coleman and Tony McDaniel. Also, the success of their careers in Knoxville are irrelevant when valuing them.

On the other hands, the players on this list don’t need to have had the best parts of their career be in Seattle. Again, this is about what they did in the pros in general and whether or not they were drafted by Seattle. We are valuing what they contributed at that level as a potential forecast to what it means for Taylor.

Simply put, this ranking is what it says it is on its face. So let’s go ahead and break down what it looks like. This is our ranking of how successful the pro careers were of the six Tennessee football before Taylor whom the Seahawks drafted throughout their history.