Tennessee played and lost to two of its former players (Addison Nichols and Doneiko Slaughter) against Arkansas earlier this season, but the Vols won’t be facing another player who used to play for them this week against Kentucky. Gerald Mincey, the starting right tackle for the Wildcats for the first seven games this season, was ruled out for a second straight game when the SEC initial availability report came out on Wednesday night ahead of Saturday night’s matchup at Neyland Stadium. Mincey started his career at Florida before spending the past two seasons at Tennessee.
He did not play in Kentucky’s 24-10 home loss to Auburn last week and redshirt freshman Malachi Wood started in Mincey’s place.
The Wildcats are 3-5 overall this season and 1-5 in SEC play having lost three straight games since scoring a huge upset at Ole Miss back in September.
Mincey didn’t go quietly to Kentucky during the offseason, responding on Twitter to the reaction to his commitment to the Wildcats and switching of SEC rivals.
“Really gave my all to Tennessee reading all these negative comments hurts man not gonna lie played this past season with a torn MCL and was able to help my team win a bowl game with a big smile on my face because I did love being a volunteer but shid business is business,” Mincey wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
In his first interview after joining the Wildcats, Mincey called himself a “troll,” per the Louisville Courier Journal, and talked about his return to face his former team at Neyland Stadium.
“I think I owe it to all the Kentucky fans to handle business on Nov. 2,” he said on January 31. “So I’m excited for that.”
He said: “Kentucky has got to do more to earn it. I’m glad. … I love the underdog (role). So when we go there Nov. 2 to Neyland and we bust them in the mouth, we can put the standard back over here.”
Mincey during the season has retweeted articles mentioning the Pro Football Focus grades for the Tennessee offensive line after the Arkansas and Florida games earlier this month and reposted a meme about Dixieland Delight being a song about Tennessee after the Vols beat Alabama.
In his two seasons at Tennessee, Mincey started 14 games, seven apiece during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. All of his starts when the Vols won 11 games two seasons ago were at left tackle, and he made six starts at right tackle during the regular season last fall before getting the start at left tackle in the Citrus Bowl win against Iowa – three days later he was in the transfer portal.
He allowed just one sack on 457 snaps in 2022 and just two sacks on 578 snaps in 2023.
Mincey redshirted at Florida in 2020 and made 10 appearances as a reserve and special-teamer, playing just 49 snaps on offense, for the Gators in 2021 before transferring, and he landed at Tennessee with head coach Josh Heupel and offensive line coach Glen Elarbee, who had recruited him out of Cardinal Gibbons High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when they were at UCF.
Kickoff between seventh-ranked Tennessee and Kentucky is set for 7:45 p.m. on the SEC Network.
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