Tennessee football solves DB depth issues with Ohio State transfer Andre Turrentine’s commitment

Two defensive backs were just selected from Tennessee football in the 2022 NFL Draft. As a result, it was always clear they had work to do to beef up their secondary. It started with the addition of Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets transfer Wesley Walker. Now, Josh Heupel has completed the process.

Ohio State Buckeyes transfer cornerback Andre Turrentine has officially committed to the Vols. Once a four-star across the board in the 2021 recruiting class, Turrentine redshirted his first year with OSU and will have four years of eligibility remaining.

Standing at 5’11” 195 pounds, Turrentine is an in-state kid out of Nashville, Tenn., and was actually teammates with Walker at Davidson County’s Ensworth High School. He hit the portal last week and announced his decision to join Tennessee football on Twitter Monday morning.

Over the weekend, Alontae Taylor went in the second round of the NFL Draft, and Theo Jackson was taken in the sixth round. They were UT’s No. 1 cornerback and starting nickel respectively last year. Without Taylor, the Vols struggled at cornerback in the Music City Bowl against the Purdue Boilermakers, raising questions about the future.

Warren Burrell, Brandon Turnage and Kamal Hadden are all returning starters expected to compete for those two cornerback spots and the nickel spots, but there was no proven depth behind them. Meanwhile, all three were out in spring ball due to various injuries along with De’Shawn Rucker.

As a result, Tennessee football needed more help there. Junior college transfer Desmond Williams is part of that help, along with Walker, but Walker is a summer enrollee and missed the spring as well. That left Christian Charles moving over from safety to cornerback at times.

Simply put, Tim Banks and Willie Martinez needed more potentially elite talent to make sure he has depth at cornerback, especially with Charles more needed to provide depth at safety. Add in Tyus Fields hitting the transfer portal, and more depth in the secondary was as crucial as ever.

Turrentine brings just that. Whether or not he starts this year remains to be seen, but he now assures that the Vols have enough bodies in the secondary to know they’ll have legitimate competition for starting spots in the fall. You can’t overstate how important that is.

In addition to providing that depth, Turrentine also now has the Vols set for the future. He’s basically another elite recruit Heupel added for 2022 given the fact that he redshirted in 2021. As a result, with a senior and four juniors part of the cornerback rotation, adding Turrentine is huge.

By 2024, you could see Turrentine, Rucker and Walker make up the main cornerback rotation, which includes the nickel spot, and there will likely be more guys added to that list. Don’t count out his potential to have an impact on Rocky Top this year either, though.

Taking all of this into account, Turrentine is a huge addition for Heupel and Tennessee football and continues the major success the program has had on the trail and in the portal in recent weeks. Everyday, there is more and more reason to be excited about the program’s future, and Turrentine adds to that.