DeSean Bishop’s name keeps showing up on lists for a reason. Tennessee’s running back is back for the 2026 season after a breakout year that pushed him past 1,000 yards, and the latest recognition only reinforces how central he is to the Vols’ offense.
On Monday, Bishop landed on the Maxwell Award preseason watch list. The honor goes to the nation’s most outstanding player in college football, and it puts the Knoxville native in a group that also includes several other prominent SEC names, among them Auburn QB Byrum Brown, Florida RB Jadan Baugh, Georgia QB Gunner Stockton, Missouri RB Ahmad Hardy, Ole Miss RB Kewan Lacy, Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss, Texas QB Arch Manning, and Texas A&M QB Marcel Reed.
Bishop was Tennessee’s starter in a three-man backfield last season, but he quickly separated himself as the engine of the group. In 182 carries, he piled up 1,076 yards and 16 touchdowns while running with a mix of power, speed, and intelligence that made him the clear lead option. He also became Tennessee’s third straight thousand-yard rusher, though he’s the only one with a chance to do it in consecutive seasons.
“DeSean having him back is huge for us,” Tennessee OC Joey Halzle said of Bishop during spring camp. “You got a back that went for over a thousand yards in this conference.
That’s not common. So the fact that we got him sitting in there again, and we’ve added some really good pieces around him where he doesn’t have to carry the ball 45 times a game and get broke down by week eight, excites me for what we can do in the run game.”
Halzle also pointed to the work Bishop puts in away from the spotlight.
“He is a guy that is, if not the best, note-taker on the team,” Halzle said. “You want him at every team meeting, every unit meeting.
That guy writes down everything you say. He’s got it all organized.
There’s no protection he doesn’t understand. There’s no run scheme he doesn’t understand.
The mental side of his game, he has really jumped into that and really embraced that, and it’s why you saw last year his game go to another level, and why I think it can even go even higher.”
Bishop’s offseason has also included work with Derek Owings, and Bishop said at SEC Media Days that the new workouts have already made an impact.
“Simple way to put it, he’s putting us to work. Honestly,” Bishop said of Owings during SEC Media Days.
“He’s just allowing us to get after it, pushing us to our ultimate limits. Getting us bigger, stronger, and faster, anything you can think of.
It’s been a privilege to just get to know him as a whole, being part of a dude that won the national championship last year, to see what he learned, taking notes from what those guys did over there. It’s been good just to be around him and get to know him better as a human.”
Bishop was also named a preseason Second Team All-SEC player by the media during SEC Media Days last month in Tampa, FL.
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Sanders went so far as to suggest Carter has the kind of athletic tools that could put him in first-round NFL Draft territory in either 2027 or 2028, a striking vote of confidence for a player still early in his development. For Tennessee fans, it is another reminder of both Carters upside and the reasons his path changed in the first place, and for Colorado it adds a little more intrigue around a transfer whose ceiling is being discussed long before the story is finished. [Read more 🡒]