Tennessee football: Could dismissal of William Mohan and Savion Herring be an issue?
It wasn’t a good morning for the Vols. Tennessee football revealed Friday that it had dismissed two players over domestic assault charges stemming from incidents that occurred less than a month apart. Both players had been suspended indefinitely for a time.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported the linebacker William Mohan and offensive lineman Savion Herring had been removed from the team. Both were transfers to the program after Heupel took over who joined Rocky Top a year apart.
Mohan was suspended in late August due to an arrest on Sunday, Aug. 20, stemming from an alleged domestic assault incident that began a day earlier. He was dismissed Monday, Sept. 5. Herring, meanwhile, was arrested last Sunday and dismissed Friday.
Of the two, Mohan has seen more experience with Tennessee football. A transfer from the Michigan Wolverines, he appeared in every game at linebacker last year as a reserve on special teams, racking up nine total tackles.
He is probably the bigger loss because of that experience and UT’s need at linebacker. There are still issues with the Vols when it comes to linebackers in coverage, which is a huge weakness of even Preseason All-SEC linebacker Jeremy Banks.
Aaron Beasley has emerged for the Vols this year, but he’s still unproven in that regard, and Solon Page III is only ever going to be a rotational player. Only Juwan Mitchell, who also transferred last year, from the Texas Longhorns, could probably address that issue right now, but he was held out of the first two games.
As a result, there was legitimate reason to have hope in Mohan, as if he had developed in the offseason, Tennessee football would have another option before Elijah Herring and Kalib Perry gain more experience. In that regard, he could be a loss.
Herring, a junior college transfer who joined the team this offseason, could have provided more experience at tackle. However, Darnell Wright is the starter at right tackle with Dayne Davis as the clear rotational guy there. Gerald Mincey is settling in at left tackle.
Mincey is still raw and will make mistakes, which is where a guy like Herring could come in, but Jeremiah Crawford is on that side too. As a result, while left tackle is a work in progress and Herring could have helped with that, it’s hard to see just how much he could have done.
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Taking all this into account, neither is a huge loss for the Vols. Tennessee football could probably have used Mohan more, but if he only saw action on special teams last year, it’s hard to see him moving past any of the starters at linebacker since they’re all back this year. Given the seriousness of the charges, it was more important for Heupel to cut bait.