Tennessee football: Vols WR Jauan Jennings keeps getting snubbed by the SEC

Volunteers senior wide receiver Jauan Jennings keeps getting snubbed by the Southeastern Conference. The league owes Tennessee football’s leader more love.

Whether it’s from the SEC league office, the SEC coaches or the SEC writers, Jauan Jennings can’t stop getting disrespected. Over the past week, Tennessee football’s senior leader has been snubbed by all three in some capacity.

We start with the league office and his half-game suspension. This was because of an incident in which he stepped on Vanderbilt Commodores punt returner Justice Shelton-Mosley’s face on a play out of bounds with Tennessee football up 28-10 and just over three minutes to go in the game. No penalty was called.

However, the league suspended Jennings for the first half of the Vols’ bowl game, citing NCAA Football Playing Rule 9-6-2 in its statement. That rule gives a conference the right to suspend a player the next game for a flagrant personal foul, even if that player was not flagged for the foul during the game.

Here’s why that ruling is ridiculous. If the SEC determined Jennings intentionally stepped on Mosley’s face, which would have to be the case to cite the phrase “flagrant personal foul,” then he would have been suspended for the whole game. Believe what you want about Jennings’s intentions, but they clearly couldn’t prove a flagrant foul, and they suspended him anyway.

So he was already robbed. Well, what happened the next week? The AP Writers left Jennings off both of their All-SEC teams. They gave it to two LSU Tigers receivers, Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson, and two Alabama Crimson Tide receivers, DeVonta Smith and Jerry Jeudy. To be fair, those were the four leading receivers this year.

However, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow and Alabama quarterback Tua Tagoailoa were first and second team All-SEC quarterbacks. So isn’t it ridiculous to leave only have receivers with All-SEC quarterbacks make it?

Jennings only had one less receiving touchdown and 17 fewer receiving yards than Jeudy, and he had three different quarterbacks throwing him the ball this year. Also, when you factor in Jennings’s 46 rushing yards and one rushing touchdown, he has more overall yards from scrimmage and the same number of touchdowns. So he’s objectively better.

Furthermore, if they were going to only go by stats, why did Smith, who had fewer yards and TDs than Jefferson, make first-team over Jefferson? After all, relying purely on stats is the only way they could have had Jeudy over Jennings. The inconsistency there was amazing.

Of course, Tennessee football was robbed all over the place by AP. Trey Smith and Nigel Warrior made first-team, but nobody else made it. Brent Cimaglia was objectively robbed, and Marquez Callaway, Daniel Bituli and even Darrell Taylor deserved to be on there as well.

Then we get to Coaches’ All-SEC. Well, Jennings gets the trifecta when it comes to snubs. Cimaglia, Callaway and Bituli made those teams along with Smith and Warrior. But Jennings was held back again due to his stats.

This time, though, the coaches didn’t solely value the stats of receivers with All-SEC quarterbacks. That’s why they had South Carolina Gamecocks wide receiver Bryan Edwards on the list. But that makes Jennings even more snubbed.

Jennings had 126 more yards than Edwards and two more touchdowns. They both had quarterback issues for much of the year. So how could anybody say that Edwards deserved to be on that list over Jennings?

It’s worth noting that five of Jennings’s eight receiving touchdowns were lead-changing touchdowns that put Tennessee football ahead, and he had sixth that tied them up with another team. So his value was incredible when it came to his scores.

Simply put, there was no excuse for Jennings being left off of both All-SEC teams. The fifth-year senior has been one of the greatest playmakers in the league all year, and the inconsistencies behind his suspension and any reason you could leave him off both teams are what make this a ridiculous move. He was snubbed in every way possible.