Devrin Young warms up before a game earlier this season (photo by Evan Woodbery)
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee — Wide receiver Devrin Young‘s junior season at Tennessee was slowed by a hand injury.
The Knoxville native had a hard time cracking the rotation at slot receiver, where he was behind starter Alton “Pig” Howard and impressive newcomer Johnathon Johnson.
Most of Young’s playing time came as a punt returner.
But a review of the News Sentinel’s snap-by-snap database shows that Young maximized every snap he played on the field.
| Snaps per game | |
|---|---|
| Auburn | 3 |
| Austin Peay | 9 |
| Kentucky | 13 |
| South Carolina | 3 |
| Vanderbilt | 3 |
| Total | 31 |
Young played only 31 offensive snaps in 2013. When Young was on the field, the Vols collected 336 yards. That’s an average of 10.84 yards per play. No one else on the roster was even close to that mark.
Obviously, the small sample size is important here. And this statistic is more a curiosity than anything meaningful.
But it’s still amazing the way that Young had a knack for being on the field when the Vols’ offense made a big play.
Young was on the field for gains of 32, 43, 40 and 37 yards.
But it wasn’t only big plays that skewed his numbers. Young was on the field for 13 plays of 10 yards or greater.
One more crazy stat: Young finished the year with six catches for 79 yards.
That means he caught a pass on 19 percent of the snaps in which he participated. He was on the field for only 14 pass plays, meaning he caught a pass on 43 percent of those snaps.
What does this mean for Young’s future? Perhaps not much.
Young will be a senior in 2014, and with an influx of new receivers arriving this spring and summer, Young will have to fight for every snap he gets in his last season.
But he deserves credit for making the best use of every moment he was on the field in 2013.