With National Signing Day over, Tennessee football secured a top 10 recruiting class. But the crazy part about that is the Volunteers may not be done.
Think about how crazy this is. A late surge that started in the Early Signing Period and ended with two big signings on National Signing Day, including one recruit that flipped from the Florida State Seminoles, Tennessee football secured its first top 10 recruiting class since 2015.
That alone is insane. The Vols have the No. 8 ranked class on Rivals, and the best part of their class is that the most highly touted player is a quarterback, five-star Harrison Bailey. Since quarterback is obviously the most important position on the field, Jeremy Pruitt secured a top 10 class where it counts.
Add in the transfers of Cade Mays, Velus Jones Jr. and Miles Jones, and Tennessee football’s recruiting class looks even better. It is a backdoor top five class. The crazy part is, though, they may not even be done.
With all this momentum, the Vols are still targeting five-star Zachary Evans. A 6’0″ 195-pound running back from Houston, Evans was let out of his LOI with the Georgia Bulldogs, but that prevented him from being able to sign with anybody on Wednesday.
As a result, he kept his recruitment open, which makes sense. Georgia is still a favorite, but the Texas A&M Aggies and Ole Miss Rebels are in play with Lane Kiffin as well. UT, though, has a great inside track to the guy.
Pruitt has been going heavily after Evans for a while. As that was happening, he lured away Evans’ primary recruiter at Texas A&M, Jay Graham, to join his staff as running backs coach. So in that sense, the Vols doubled their advantage. Now, Evans may not commit and sign until March.
What stands out, though, is the fact that the Vols are heavily in play for a five-star when they already have a top 10 class plus three transfers, two of whom were four-stars and one who was a five-star coming out of high school, who could all play immediately this year. The five-star, by the way, is Mays and will only be a junior.
Considering the fact that the top 10 class itself had no junior college transfers, Pruitt really built this program up for the future. Adding Evans would be a major exclamation point to what was an incredible finish, a finish that matched the momentum Rocky Top was on to finish the season.
If Evans commits, the Vols may flirt with having a top five class, and the other factors we named will make it effectively a top five class no matter what. However, if he doesn’t, this class is still incredibly impressive given what the program suffered early last Fall.
Simply put, Tennessee football is in a great position with spring practice on the horizon. Fans should be thrilled at how everything played out over the past two months when it came to their personnel upgrades. Not being done shows just how exciting things are for them.