Tennessee football: Theo Jackson owns Twitter user who predicted he wouldn’t get drafted

Twitter is a great site for trolling. It’s also a great site for trolling back the trolls. That’s what former Tennessee football defensive back Theo Jackson has been able to do after being taken by the Titans in the sixth round of the 2022 NFL Draft.

Jackson’s background photo on his Twitter page is a picture of a Twitter user predicting he wouldn’t get drafted. The user, who goes by SECpix and whose handle is @VolsPix, actually put up $200 in the tweet, which was back in October, predicting Jackson wouldn’t get drafted.

It all stemmed from @VolsPix questioning why Heupel didn’t start Brandon Turnage against the Ole Miss Rebels after he won SEC Defensive Player of the Week against the South Carolina Gamecocks. When a commenter said Tennessee football had Jackson back and healthy, this was his reply. Jackson, for his part, laughed it off.

Over the next couple days, the account took more shots at Jackson with vague takes to try to undercut his numbers, suggesting he puts up stats because teams target him since he gets torched in coverage. That obviously ignores his 80.2 regular season PFF grade. Jackson, for his part, laughed it off.

SECPix has become a bit infamous in Vol Nation for oddly defending the job Jeremy Pruitt did to an excessive level while slighting Josh Heupel. Even this past weekend in the NFL Draft, the account chimed in on our Twitter handle to defend an account claiming four players drafted from UT were Pruitt guys.

That was wrong, as two of the five draftees, Matthew Butler and Jackson himself, had actually signed with Butch Jones. However, when that was pointed out, SECPix jumped in to defend the initial user while trolling our website.

Taking a shot at Jackson was another one of the user’s attempts to question Heupel’s decision-making and put some legitimacy behind it. In the process, though, it became a self-own, as Jackson, which we wrote about as being one of the greatest feel-good stories of the NFL Draft, didn’t forget.

Of course, whether or not Jackson actually lasts in the pros remains to be seen. However, being drafted is already a great success given what he had to fight through over five years, playing almost every position in three different systems.

Heupel and Tim Banks finally penciled him into one position and made him the full-time starter there this past year, and all he did was make All-SEC and lead Tennessee football in pass deflections. He proved previous coaches and social media users wrong.