I was a student two of his seasons at Tennessee, you couldn't find a more humble, down to earth athlete at Tennessee at the time, other than Chris Lofton.
Berry was one of those rare players good from day 1. He had like a 95 yd pick 6 at UF as a FR. And you know how we choke there. Numerous power hits including making Tebow feel it. Just a head hunter and ball hawk. Needed no coaching
I still remember Kiffin coming in 2009 and saying no one had their job guaranteed, you had to earn it under the new boss.......except for Eric Berry. He's our starting safety.
Eric Berry and Janzen Jackson could not have been two better safeties to have that particular year to execute Monte Kiffin’s famed Tampa Two defense. Those two prowling the secondary together were the driving force of any success we had on that side of the ball in 2009. I remember Monte being so impressed with Eric Berry’s awesomeness that he was emphatically on record saying as someone who coached legendary HOF NFL safeties he literally thought that EB should be the number one pick in the entire draft. He thought that highly of him. Monte’s scheme didn’t translate nearly as well to the college game when he went to the PAC 12 and no longer had two All American caliber head hunting ball hawks keeping everything glued together
I've always wondered when we are in the middle of a coaching search and that "special" portion of our fan base starts seriously throwing former players with no coaching experience out as options that he isn't named. If I were forced to make a list of players I'd want coaching here, he'd probably be an easy number one.
