Byron Young discusses Senior Bowl reps against former teammate Darnell Wright

The college football Senior Bowl occurred last week, where all of the nation’s top seniors gather for a week of practices capped off by a game. Really, it’s an opportunity for graduating players to showcase themselves as they prepare for the NFL Draft. So there are a million scouts and a lot of pressure to perform well, since this is the last real game and set of practices for these players before NFL teams start to drill down their draft boards.

Two players likely to get drafted and hoping to pump up their stock last week were Byron Young (defensive lineman) and Darnell Wright (offensive lineman), both from Tennessee. So during the practices, Young wanted to go up against Wright for old time’s sake — a little friend-on-friend action between the former Vols.

However, Young says he never really got to go up against Wright in practice sets or much at all in-game action. He ran into him a few times on certain plays during the scrimmages but never got a chance to face Wright in one-on-one drills.

“So we were doing one-on-ones. I was so ready for him but the period was like…one period for one-on-ones. I say like it’s a lot of guys that trying to do one-on-ones. So Darnell be on this side, he’ll be on the left side, I’ll be on the right. The first three days, the first two days, I went against, you know, all these guys from Syracuse, Alabama, Oklahoma.”

Young tried to get matched up with Wright, but it just didn’t work out, which was a shame, because Wright and Young were excited to clash helmets in front of the plethora of NFL scouts.

“Then the last day, Darnell was a friend. I was trying to — I said…let me go against Darnell. Now, I didn’t go against him yet. He said he didn’t go against me either. Man, you know, I’m trying to get on tape. Me and Darnell, you know, going back at it again, how it was in practice. But I didn’t get to go against him.”

The only time they clashed was during team-on-team action, rather than one-on-one. Even then, Byron Young was never lined up to rush directly against his old buddy.

“But in teams, I went against him a little bit. But it was nice. You know, every time I went against him and he was pulling or something or it was right. So I never did get a shot at him. Darnell played great, man. He did. He did great out there, man. I was happy for him, everything he was doing and just doing the same, what he was doing at Tennessee. So that was a great see yeah.”

Well, sounds like the two are pretty close pals. Just sucks they didn’t get to face off against one another.