Some quick thoughts wrapping up the spring recruiting period for Tennessee, which culminated with the Orange & White Game last weekend
- The large majority of prospects detailed in the weekend preview made it to campus as expected, with the notable exception of TE Arik Gilbert. Gilbert appears to be, if not trending away from Tennessee per se, trending towards instate UGA at the moment
- Interestingly, Tennessee chose to bring in five of the visitors officially, including one already committed prospect in DL Dominic Bailey from Maryland. On its face this seems like a strange and possibly poor decision by Coach Jeremy Pruitt, as the official visit is the most meaningful and therefore precious card a school can play. And to do so in mid-April certainly is “shooting your shot,” particularly with prospects from places like Maryland, Michigan, and Texas who by definition have to travel quite a bit and on their own dime in order to make it back to campus. Even if all five of the official visitors had committed to Tennessee, there is still right months until the Early Signing Period, a lifetime in recruiting. And in fact none of them actually did commit. That’s not to say of course that the weekend was unsuccessful, as undoubtedly the visits helped the Vols a great deal in each of the respective recruitments. And of course no one really knows if any of the prospects essentially said that without and OV they weren’t going to visit and they wanted to come this particular weekend. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how the strategy pays off with these recruits, and we really won’t know until the faxes roll in in December and then February
- The Vols did land one commitment over the weekend from electric Slot WR/CB Jimmy Calloway from South Georgia. Potentially an early enrollee with offers from Oregon, Georgia Tech (and new Head Coach Brent Key formerly at Alabama) among others, Calloway fits the Pruitt mold of an explosive athlete who can play on either side of the ball and is comfortable with the ball in his hands. Frankly, if Oregon wants a Slot WR prospect you can sign me up. He showed out at a couple of spring 7-on-7 events (where he’s teammates with fellow Vol target EJ Williams, one of the aforementioned OV’s this past weekend) showing off great route running and dynamic playmaking ability. Calloway looks like a case of getting in early on a kid by taking his commitment before other bigtime programs either have the chance to pull the trigger or even evaluate properly and depending on how willing he is to look around before December the Vols may very well find themselves fighting to hold on
- Once again Pruitt and his staff did an excellent job all winter/spring of getting recruits to campus, many multiple times. As noted above Tennessee ended with a bang in what was an incredibly successful weekend in terms of the volume of bigtime recruits on campus, especially considering the other schools who were also holding their spring games
- As such, and combined with the work done last season getting these Class of 2020 kids to campus for camps and/or game in the Fall of 2018, Tennessee is set up nicely right now
- To begin with, the Vols have six really, really good commitments, including a stud QB (and peer recruiter) in Harrison Bailey, a stud JUCO DE in Memphis-native and former Alabama signee Jordan Davis, and 4-star DL Bailey among them
- At the same time, the Vols have positioned themselves at or near the top for a very impressive number of elite prospects. Not just a handful, but legitimately upwards of thirty-plus 5 and 4-star prospects against whom Tennessee is deep in battles with the likes of Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, and Ohio State. The Vols are simply fishing in much deeper waters than we’ve seen in quite awhile
- Notably, and in contrast to last cycle, Tennessee has also put itself in strong position with a large number of instate prospects it (and other power programs) covets. In particular, DB Keshawn Lawrence, OL Cooper Mays, DL Tyler Baron, DL Jay Hardy, DL Trevonn Rybka and RB/LB Tee Hodge are instate kids for whom one could convincingly say the Vols lead, and Tennessee is seemingly 2nd behind Alabama in a two-team race for bigtime DE (and Bama legacy) DE Reggie Grimes from the midstate. On the other hand, if Tennessee wants to be a real factor in Memphis this cycle, which is well known to be the case, the Vols are going to need to get the likes of OL/DL Omari Thomas, OL Chris Morris, and WR Darrin Turner on campus again relatively soon (while OL Marcus Henderson and ATH Jabari Small have been to Knoxville this spring)
- All recruiting eyes will be in Athens, GA this weekend when UGA holds its own spring game with little to no competition for prospects. Tennessee targets expected to attend include OL Tate Ratledge; OL Paris Johnson (OSU commitment); LB Mekhail Sherman (Rakim Jarrett’s teammate); RB Tank Bigsby; DL Zykevious Walker; OLB BJ Ojulari; TE Arik Gilbert; DB Joel Williams, and potentially OL Cooper Mays. Ratledge in particular will be worth watching as the elite OT is a Tennessee-Georgia battle and was just in Knoxville for the Orange & White Game