Washington Huskies quarterback Michael Penix Jr, a potential early round selection in the 2024 NFL Draft, called out the Tennessee Vols this week in an open letter to NFL general managers. 

Penix wrote the lengthy letter for The Players' Tribune. In the letter, Penix mentioned how he was forced to find a new school just weeks before the early signing period in late 2017 when Tennessee told him that they didn't think he was good enough to play in the SEC. 

"I faced adversity before I even got to college," wrote Penix. "Two weeks before signing day I was told by the team I was committed to for two years that I no longer had a scholarship. They didn’t think I was good enough to play in the SEC. I decided to go to Indiana because Nick Sheridan was the QB coach, and he believed in me from the time he offered me at Tennessee to when he took his position at Indiana." 

(Note: Nick Sheridan was a graduate assistant at Tennessee from 2014 to 2016 before landing the quarterbacks coach job at Indiana in 2017). 

The story of Penix's commitment to Tennessee is well-documented by now. 

Penix committed to Tennessee when Butch Jones was the program's head coach. Jones was fired at the end of the 2017 season and after a bizarre coaching search, Jeremy Pruitt was hired to replace Jones. 

Pruitt, according to Penix's mother, initially wanted to honor Penix's commitment. 

Then Vols offensive coordinator Tyson Helton, however, preferred JT Shrout over Penix. Because of Helton's preference, the decision was made to pull Penix's offer and go with Shrout instead. 

Pruitt admitted earlier this year that Tennessee simply didn't think Penix was good enough at the time to excel in the SEC. 

“The truth of the matter is we all watched the tape and, just being completely honest, we didn’t think he was good enough at that point in his career when he was 17 years old," said Pruitt to Dawg Nation in January. "It’s not a perfect science. But look at him now, he’s two inches taller and 30 pounds heavier, a grown man. I’m happy for him, it has worked out great.”

As much as Tennessee fans probably don't want to admit it, the best thing that happened to Penix's career was not signing with the Vols. Tennessee wasn't exactly a quarterback's paradise during the Pruitt years. And Penix likely would've been buried on the depth chart and forced to look for a new home at a time when transferring wasn't quite as easy as it is now. It's incredibly unlikely that Penix would've still been in Knoxville in 2021 when Josh Heupel took over as the program's head coach. 

Penix's college football career (and his NFL draft stock) almost certainly worked out better because he didn't land at Tennessee in late 2017. 

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