Tennessee football: Top 10 NFL careers of Vols taken in second round

Darrell Taylor joins many Tennessee football players who were second-round NFL Draft picks. Here are the Volunteers selected then with the greatest careers.

Just last month, Tennessee football wasn’t expected to have anybody taken in the first two days outside of maybe Jauan Jennings. However, then Darrell Taylor’s NFL Draft stock continued to rise at a rapid pace.

Despite his revelation that he played all of 2019 with a stress fracture and then him missing the NFL combine due to recovery from a surgery to repair that injury, interest in Taylor shot through the roof. On the day of the draft, there was one analyst projecting him in the first round. It ended with him being taken in the second round by the Seattle Seahawks, who traded up to get him.

Taylor is Tennessee football’s highest draft pick since Derek Barnett was taken in the first round by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2017. He is also the 30th player in school history to be taken in the second round of the draft.

When it comes to expectations, second-rounders are up there. So who is Taylor going to want to live up to from Rocky Top as a pick in that round? In this post, we’re going to rank those top former Vols taken in the second round based on the pro careers they had.

Our criteria for this is simple. We look at all 30 players who came from UT and were taken in the second round, and we take the ones who had the best pro careers. Pro success includes number of years in the NFL, number of games played, number of starts and postseason recognition.

Given the school’s elite history in the pros, there were obviously quite a few second-rounders who had great careers at the next level. Simply put, Taylor has some big shoes to fill. But just how big are they? Let’s break that down here with a look at the 10 best pro careers of Tennessee football players taken in the second round of the NFL Draft.