Morven Joseph enters his second season at Tennessee.
The 6-foot-2, 215-pound linebacker appeared in all of Tennessee’s 10 games in 2020, totaling two tackles.
Joseph came to Tennessee from Lake Gibson High School in Lakeland, Florida.
Following the Vols’ sixth practice during fall training camp, its first in full pads, linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary met with media and discussed Joseph within Tennessee’s defense.
“Morven has been with us at the inside linebacker spot, and we have some specific packages where we’re going to try to use him as a pass rusher because we feel like he does that really well,” Jean-Mary said of Joseph during fall training camp. “His big thing is that he’s another guy that was an edge guy in high school. He’s learned to play stack linebacker because it’s a difference and you’re more read and react. When you’re an edge guy, you’re more react and read. Right now, he’s still trying to learn what to do as far as the stack linebacker. He’s been really good through our first six practices. ‘MoJo’ is an interesting player to evaluate because he’s such a good athlete that sometimes he might look like it’s taking a little while to process, but when you look at it, he’s getting there faster than other people because he’s such a good athlete.
“With guys like that, you want to make sure you put them in positions to have success. You don’t want to keep pounding away and take away from his skill set. I think he’s progressing at the rate that we want him to, obviously, we want him to be a little faster and be able to play stack, as well as become an edge rusher. Through the first six practices, he’s been good.”
During his time at Lake Gibson, Joseph had an offensive background.
Lake Gibson defensive line coach Levi Hargrove discussed Joseph moving to defense after starting out as a wide receiver.
“As a freshman when he came in, he was playing wide receiver,” Hargrove told Vols Wire of Joseph. “He spurted three inches from his eighth grade to ninth grade year. He was still growing into his body and he came over to defense. I talked him into playing defensive end — a hybrid, edge rusher.
“I told him to just go hit the quarterback. He naturally chop-ripped the tackle’s hands, got rid of him, and got to the quarterback. He came back and loved it.”
Joseph was placed in offensive packages during his senior season.
“His senior year, we put him into our goal line package as a power back,” Hargrove said. “It was a power-I formation, offset fullback and he ended up getting a couple of carries and scored a touchdown.
“We did give him a couple of passes. He would bubble out and had one or two passes thrown to him.”
Heupel is known to place defensive players on offense and utilize their abilities.
Below are stats when Heupel placed defensive players on offense since his time as offensive coordinator at Utah State in 2015.
2019 UCF
- Nate Evans (linebacker) 2 attempts, 10 yards
2018 UCF
- Trysten Hill (defensive line) 2 attempts, 1 yard, 1 touchdown
2017 Missouri
- Markell Utsey (defensive line) 1 attempt, 2 yards
2016 Missouri
- Josh Augusta (defensive line) 10 attempts, 15 yards, 2 touchdowns
- Anthony Sherrils (defensive back) 1 attempt, 14 yards, 1 reception, 11 yards
- Tyler Hanneke (defensive line) 2 receptions, 26 yards
2015 Utah State
- Nick Vigil (linebacker) 6 attempts, 17 yards, 1 touchdown
- Jalen Davis (defensive back) 1 attempt, 3 yards
- David Moala (defensive line) 1 attempt, 1 yard, 1 touchdown
Josh Heupel’s linemen, defensive players on offense by the numbers
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