Tuesday, August 16, 2011

MV! voters spring no surprises in defensive tackle poll

All right, we've tallied up the defensive tackles in the latest installment of our MV! Significant Playing Time Poll, and now we're moving on to the defensive ends. Maybe we can get this poll finished before the season starts and before Coach Franklin changes everybody's position.

Remember, you want to vote for as many players as you think will get significant playing time, which we define as the majority of any given game or key moments in the very biggest games.

Anyway, here's how y'all voted for the defensive tackles:

1. T.J. Greenstone, R-SR: 91 percent
2. Rob Lohr, R-JR: 88 percent
3. Colt Nichter, R-JR: 77 percent
4. Jared Morse, SO: 57 percent
5. Vince Taylor, R-FR: 51 percent
6. Barron Dixon, FR: 42 percent
7. Taylor Loftley, R-JR: 25 percent

No surprises here. Everybody everywhere seems to think that Greenstone will start at one tackle and Lohr and Nichter will compete for the other starting job. Lohr, you'll remember, started every game last season after Adam Smotherman went down in preseason camp, and Nichter stepped up when Greenstone got hurt.

Jared Morse got some meaningful minutes last season as a true frosh, and redshirt Vince Taylor is ready to get some of those this season. Those guys round out a decent five-man rotation that's fairly interchangeable.

The freshman Barron Dixon will probably travel with the team but we're not sure whether he'll get on the field this season. He'll have to be significantly better than at least one of the five guys ahead of him for the team to burn his redshirt.

Then there's Taylor Loftley, the redshirt junior who's rounding out his Vandy career. We think he'll see spot duty at best.

OK, now go vote for some defensive ends. And if you're wondering where Conor Hart is, he just got moved to defensive tackle. No, you didn't get to vote for him, but that doesn't matter much because it looks like he's redshirting.

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