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Tennessee football: Johnny Majors all-time depth chart

By Caleb Calhoun

ANAHEIM, CA - AUGUST 26: Wide receiver Carl Pickens #15 of the Tennessee Volunteers runs with the ball against the Colorado Buffaloes during the Pigskin Classic at Anaheim Stadium on August 26, 1990 in Anaheim, California. The Buffs and Vols tied 31-31. (Photo by Bernstein Associates/Getty Images)
ANAHEIM, CA - AUGUST 26: Wide receiver Carl Pickens #15 of the Tennessee Volunteers runs with the ball against the Colorado Buffaloes during the Pigskin Classic at Anaheim Stadium on August 26, 1990 in Anaheim, California. The Buffs and Vols tied 31-31. (Photo by Bernstein Associates/Getty Images) /
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Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images
Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images /

This is a look at the Tennessee football Volunteers all-time depth chart under Johnny Majors.

Note: This is part of a series of posts remembering Johnny Majors and all that he accomplished for Tennessee football as a player and a coach. 

By the time Phillip Fulmer took over for Johnny Majors in 1992, Tennessee football emerged once again as a national program, a dramatic improvement from where it was when Majors took over in 1977. A huge reason for that was the amount of national talent he finally was able to bring in.

Majors, who passed away at age 85 in early June, did not get to win a national championship as Vols’ head coach the way he did with the Pittsburgh Panthers. However, he laid the foundation for that to be the case.

Part of that foundation included a group of guys that easily could have made up a national championship roster. Tennessee football had gone through multiple schemes and formations during the Majors years, but by the end, he was responsible for some of the greatest players at different positions for the school.

So how could you construct a roster out of that talent? Well, in this post, that’s going to be our focus. We’ll break down the all-time depth chart for the Vols under Majors, using a two-deep system at each position.

Now, the defense evolved under Majors from a 5-2 in the early 1980s to a 3-4 later to eventually a 4-3 under Larry Lacewell. Because of that, the average base defense was a standard 4-3, and that will be our focus with.

Meanwhile, the offense began as an I-formation/veer mix that evolved into a pro-style. All the while, UT was Wide Receiver U, sometimes shifting its power utility player from a fullback to a tight end to both. As a result, the offense will go two and a half deep at receiver with an extra slot guy while also combining fullbacks and tight ends, going two and a half deep there.

In both cases, though, we end up going 22-deep on each side of the ball. Then we’ll go two-deep with kickers, punters and return specialists, making for 50 total players on here across 17 slides. No player will be used more than once.

What’s clear is Majors built lots of elite talent at some position where we had to give numerous honorable mentions. So just how deep were those spots? How thin were the others? Let’s break it down here. This is our Tennessee football all-time two-deep depth chart from the years under Johnny Majors as head coach.

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