Garner: DL Dominic Bailey is the 'Most Improved Guy in the Room'

Tennessee needs productive bodies across the front of its defensive unit. The Vols lost Matthew Butler, Caleb Tremblay and Jay Blakely following the 2021

Tennessee needs productive bodies across the front of its defensive unit. The Vols lost Matthew Butler, Caleb Tremblay and Jay Blakely following the 2021 season. To this point in fall camp, there have been several guys step up, including a new name that popped up today, Dominic Bailey. 

The once-coveted recruit was viewed as a pivotal recruiting victory for Jeremy Pruitt & Co. in the 2020 class, but his career on Rocky has never seemed to get on track. But that may change in 2022, according to Rodney Garner, who believes Bailey is the "most improved guy" in the room. 

"I said this in our staff meeting the other day, I said it in my position meetings this morning, if we had to vote on who is probably the most improved guy in the room, it would definitely be Dominic Bailey," Garner told the media on Monday morning. "He's gotten better; he really has. He's flashed and he's shown that he's going to have an opportunity to help this team. The thing that I was a little bit worried about out there today, I give him that compliment in the meeting room, then at practice I started to see the old Dom. Like man, you can't do that. We can't play Yo-Yo. You can't be up and down. We need to be consistently climbing that mountain. But from what he's shown— and he started picking it up better in the later part of practice — the previous six practices, he put himself in a position that we think he's going to have an opportunity to help this team." 

Bailey, a former four-star recruit, once anchored one of the most dominant front sevens that high school football has seen in the last decade, so it is not all that surprising to see him turning the page. According to Garner, it has really come down to changing his body and mindset to get to this point. 

So obviously, he's done a really good job this offseason," Garner added about Bailey. "I think his body has changed. I think his mentality has changed. He's a little bit more talented than I thought. Maybe that's just gaining the strength, what the weight room brings. Maybe just him getting more comfortable in the system that we're running, too. He's been able to show and flash a lot more."

Bailey could have a chance to help this team in 2022, but he will have to prove it on the practice field, as Garner reiterated today that he would not play a defensive lineman just for depth purposes. 

"I don't think you can afford to do that, to be totally honest with you," Garner said of this. "You may get away with it in a non-conference game. But in a conference game, I don't know that you can afford to do that. They've got to show some glimpses of what they're going to be or could be. Maybe they've just not gotten there totally because of they haven't gotten totally comfortable with the system and the game hasn't slowed down enough for them to play faster. But they have shown flashes that they can be really good. But you know, other than that, we try to go out here every day, and we're straining, trying to find ten guys that can play at a championship level. I think you cheat the other ten guys on the field when you put a guy out there that's not ready, that maybe can't execute the calls, that's not going to play hard, that's not going to give his all for everybody out there. And these guys work too hard for that, for me to cheat them out of an opportunity to win."