Despite COVID-19 shutdown, Vols well-positioned to build strong 2021 class

While the COVID-19 pandemic has effectively hit pause on most American life, the crisis has not stopped Tennessee’s spring recruiting momentum.

Despite an extended NCAA dead period until May 31 — no visits, camps or in-person evaluations — the Vols have picked up a pair of commits in just the last 10 days.

Notably, both prospects — wideout Walker Merrill and tailback Jaylen Wright — hail from Tennessee’s backyard.

“Backyard” is a subjective term here, but for the Vols, it means landing as many prospects within a 5-6 hour radius of Knoxville. Merrill is from Nashville. Wright hails from North Carolina, same for defensive lineman Isaac Washington, who gave his verbal pledge to Jeremy Pruitt earlier in March.

Now this is typically Tennessee’s recruiting strategy anyways, but during a time with no 7-on-7 tournaments, campus visits halted and likely no (or minimal) college camps this summer, schools have begun to narrow their board — focusing more on guys who have been on campus already, or localizing their targets.

And both instances are advantages for Tennessee in 2021.

The Vols do not have the in-state pipelines of LSU, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida or even Maryland, but the COVID-19 shutdown + some recent staff changes has created a unique set of circumstances for the Vols this particular cycle.

Back in January and February, Tennessee did a nice job getting prospects from Florida, the DMV and Philadelphia to campus, but more importantly, they loaded up on visitors from North Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.

The latter group, along with some additional targets in-state (i.e. Junior Colson, Hudson Wolfe, Dietrick Pennington, William Griffin), stands to make up the bulk of the 2021 class.

By poaching Jay Graham away from Texas A&M, Tennessee reopened its old pipeline back into the Carolinas.

A year after not signing a single player from North Carolina, Graham, a star at Concord High, has immediately paid dividends in the region this cycle. Tennessee's new tailbacks coach knows the landscape well and has already landed Wright, while helping position the Vols with key targets like Kaman Marley, Jahvaree Ritzie, Colby Smith and Travail Price. Tennessee is also recruiting Payton Page, Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, Tiyon Evans and RaRa Dillworth from the Carolinas.

It’s well-known across Big Orange Country that much of Tennessee’s success in 90s came from guys who hailed from the Carolinas. Just ask Phillip Fulmer.

In a radio appearance Sunday, Tennessee's athletics director described how “huge” the region was/is to the Vols, saying, “We’re closer to North Carolina than to half of the kids in the state. We owned North Carolina, especially (western) North Carolina and northern South Carolina, the upper state, upper-state South Carolina. And it made a huge difference. I believe on our national championship team, I think every defensive lineman we had was from Carolina, one of the Carolinas.”

In the Peach State, the addition of new outside linebackers coach Shelton Felton, coupled by shifting some recruiting areas with other staffers, has made Tennessee a real player for coveted targets like Nyland Green, Cody Brown, Julian Nixon and Dylan Fairchild — all prospects who visited campus this year before the national moratorium.

Finally, Tennessee has rarely beaten out the in-state powers for the top players in Alabama, but that could change in 2021 with the two-headed tandem of Derrick Ansley and Tee Martin — both Yellowhammer State natives — who convinced top targets to give multiple looks at Tennessee this year.

Blue-chip linebacker priorities Dylan Brooks and Jeremiah Williams both visited Rocky Top multiple times before the shutdown. Same for athlete Malachi Bennett and defensive lineman Anquin Barnes. The Vols already have a couple commits from Alabama, too, including 4-star wideout Jordan Mosley.

“There’s lot of guys that have been on our campus, and then there’s some that have not. We’ve got to do a really good job of being able for them to get a good feel to what it’s like on game day at Tennessee, what it’s like in the classroom, who’s the people that’s going to be able to kind of help them grow and develop on and off the field throughout their four years at Tennessee,” Pruitt said recently.

“We have to gather as much information as we can so we can move forward and understand, because you have to have a board, you have to say, ‘OK, here’s the quarterbacks that we’re looking at, here’s where they’re at. Here’s the defensive backs, here’s the kickers, here’s the centers, the tackles, the guards.’ We have a plan of how we stack our boards, how we evaluate the things that we’re looking for, so we just have to do a really good job to gather the information and make good decisions and trust our evals.”

Of course the Vols won’t land all the aforementioned targets. But they won’t strike out either.

With more and more prospects choosing familiarity and looking to stay closer to home during a disrupted cycle, that should be a boon for Tennessee’s class in 2021 thanks to the work the staff did in the previous months — especially January and February — and the relationships the Vols established with key targets in surrounding states like North Carolina and Alabama.