Greeson: Tebow will be replaced easier than Vols’ Berry

People leave. In sports it’s a yearly, weekly and sometimes daily hurdle that faces every team and every program.

Coaches quit, stars graduate or retire and players get hurt. The games, though, wait for no one.

More times than not, the bigger the void, the bigger the surprise from the next name on the depth chart. Whether it’s lowering expectations or raising the roles of teammates, there is no one who is irreplaceable. The ultimate salve is winning, of course, and despite the preseason hand-wringing, frequently new hands are ready.

Take Florida quarterback John Brantley. Brantley gets the toughest pair of shoes to fill since Bob Kesling took over for John Ward in the UT announcer’s chair. Seriously, following Tim Tebow, the former face of college football, is a daunting task.

But the Gators will be fine, and Brantley will be up to it. He won’t be on the cover of any video games and his name won’t be listed on Heisman watch lists, but Brantley will guide an offense that will have as much success this season as it did last.

If Tebow’s unbelievable success and unending desire had a drawback, it was that his skills forced the rest of the Gators deep into the shadows. It was not a problem — again, winning cures all — but it still created a vacuum in which a talented Florida offense all too frequently became spectating crews rather than supporting casts. It happened in the SEC championship loss to Alabama, when Tebow struggled and the wheels came off as the Crimson Tide steamrolled Florida.

With Brantley, who threw three touchdown passes in last weekend’s scrimmage, the need for help will be a call to arms for his teammates.

Brantley, though, steps into the seemingly perfect scenario, and while the success will be his team’s, a Florida failure will be more his than anyone else’s. That’s not fair, of course, but it’s the price of the stepping into the spotlight.

Not all newcomers are welcomed with the same luxuries, of course.

Alabama’s Rolando McClain and Tennessee’s Eric Berry, arguably the two best defensive players in the country last year, leave monstrous holes to fill.

Alabama’s Dont’a Hightower has the talent to excel as McClain’s replacement, and he has the talent around him to help smooth that transition. That said, the future is not as clear for Hightower as it is for Brantley.

While each newcomer has the burden of replacing a true leader, McClain was more the central part of the whole than Tebow’s centerpiece to the program. Plus, McClain’s ultimate value came from making his teammates and his defense infinitely better.

Same goes for Berry, who may have had a disappointing final season statistically in Knoxville. But a drop in numbers for the All-America safety was as much because of the varying roles he filled and the wariness of opponents to test him.

Still, his absence is noted on a Volunteers defense that will be desperate for playmakers, especially with the dismissal of Darren Myles, who was the leading candidate to replace Berry. The Vols are still searching for the final pieces in their secondary around Janzen Jackson, and that includes trying to find Berry’s successor.

The by-committee approach, however, is the worst way to attempt to replace a star.