Tennessee football: Ranking all head coaches’ final NFL Draft classes

Last weekend rounded out the final NFL Draft class for Jeremy Pruitt as head coach of the Tennessee football program. Dating back to 1936, the first ever NFL Draft, there have been 15 final draft classes for head coaches on Rocky Top. Where does Pruitt’s stack up against the other coaches? How do those coaches stack up against each other?

In this post, we’re going to rank all 15 of those draft classes. Keep in mind that since we can’t project how well this class will perform at the next level, this ranking is solely based on the depth of the draft class itself. That means number of players drafted and when they were drafted are all that matters.

Obviously, Josh Heupel won’t be on this list since he hasn’t had a draft class at UT yet. That’ll happen next year. What about the other coaches? Let’s break that down here. This is our ranking of all 15 Tennessee football head coaches’ final NFL Draft classes.

Number of NFL Draft picks: 0

During the mid-1950s, Bowden Wyatt oversaw the selection of numerous elite players, including John Gordy, Tom Tracy and Bill Anderson. However, by the 1960s, the Vols were falling significantly behind the times, as the single-wing was completely out of date and not conducive to producing NFL talent. The veer option offense more fashionable today than the single-wing was then.

As a result, UT did not have a system that would produce NFL talent, and that meant it wasn’t going to attract NFL talent either. The program suffered, as Wyatt never made a bowl game after 1957 and didn’t have a top 20 finish after 1960.

A losing record in 1962 was Wyatt’s second in five years, and another year he finished just one game over .500. Clearly Tennessee football needed some new blood, and that would be Wyatt’s final year as a head coach. The program’s descent showed as he remains the only coach in school history whose final draft class had no selections.