Rising fourth-year junior linebacker Justin King is no longer on the Tennessee football team, Vols coach Butch Jones confirmed to GoVols247 on Thursday.

The 6-foot-2, 245-pound King is set to graduate from UT this semester and would be free to transfer anywhere for his final two seasons of eligibility, and Jones said the program would help the Atlanta-area native do that.

King played H-back as a freshman in Tennessee in 2012, collecting 18 yards on two carries in eight appearances in Coach Derek Dooley’s final season with the Vols. He redshirted while transitioning to linebacker in 2013 under then-new Tennessee coach Butch Jones, and he appeared in all 13 games in 2014 (mostly on special teams) and collected two tackles —Â one solo and one assist.

“Justin King isn’t on our football team anymore,” Jones told GoVols247. “He’s gonna graduate and move on with his life and possibly maybe look to play somewhere else. …We’ll help him with that process.”

Tennessee will be short on numbers at a few spots on the defense —Â including middle linebacker — in spring practice, and it had been thought that King, an outside linebacker by trade, was a potential stop-gap option in the middle because of his size. Obviously that’s no longer an option, but Jones said the Vols will experiment some with rising redshirt freshman Dillon Bates at the Mike spot this spring. Bates won’t be 100 percent cleared for contact while finishing his recovery from a surgery to repair a torn shoulder labrum, but Jones said the son of former Vols and NFL defender Bill Bates will be able to do some things.

January freshman enrollee Darrin Kirkland Jr. is still seen a prospect with immediate-impact potential, but he’ll miss the spring while recovering from surgery to repair a torn pectoral muscle. Rising sophomore middle linebacker Jakob Johnson also will miss this spring while recovering from surgery to correct a shoulder problem.

Aside from rising fourth-year junior Kenny Bynum, rising redshirt freshman Gavin Bryant is Tennessee’s only other scholarship middle linebacker on the active roster. Jones said the Vols will manage and experiment with some things at the Mike spot this spring, but that Kirkland, Bates and Johnson would all be 100 percent healthy by June or July.

It’s also possible that versatile 2015 signee Austin Smith will get a look at Mike when he enrolls this summer. The staff has thought of several places to potentially play the athletic, 6-foot-3, 235-pound Smith.â€¨

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