Tennessee football: Phillip Fulmer touts Vols in trenches, recruiting in Carolinas

Volunteers athletic director Phillip Fulmer discussed Tennessee football’s offensive and defensive linemen along with recruiting North and South Carolina.

On Sunday, UT athletic director Phillip Fulmer did an interview on 99.1 The Sports Animal in Knoxville’s “The Nation.” In the interview, he discussed a range of topics, largely related to the SEC’s and Rocky Top’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. But beyond COVID-19, there were some interesting takeaways related to Tennessee football as well.

Of all of Fulmer’s successes from his days as a head coach, he had two major strengths nobody could ignore. One was coaching in the trenches. That’s no surprise, as he was a captain and starting offensive lineman for three straight top 10 teams and an SEC Championship team in the late 1960s and early 1970s and then spent 19 years coaching linemen at three different schools.

The other, however, was recruiting. Under Fulmer’s leadership, Tennessee football developed a brand of being able to go anywhere, and there were a couple of unique spots he was able to dominate during his time, which we’ll get to.

Anyway, on Sunday, Fulmer discussed both topics. When it came to the linemen, he was very honest, noting that the unit is deeper and much better than it has been but also adding that the offensive line still wasn’t dominating teams just yet. Here’s a bit of what he said on that.

"“There’s not a bunch of guys there, one or two maybe, that are here now, there’s some coming, that they’re five-star guys. But during the course of the season, you saw them on the defensive front just keep getting better and better and controlling the line of scrimmage and stopping the run and making teams do things they didn’t want to do. That’s a great recipe to win. On the offensive side, we certainly improved. I would say that we certainly improved from the beginning of the season to the end of the season. Did we ever actually become a dominating offensive front? No, we’ve still got a ways to do that.”"

Fulmer’s right. Of course, being competent was all that mattered. After all, the Vols were historically bad up front in 2018 and had many problems to start off 2019 up there. But with every starter on the line back plus the addition of Cade Mays, the potential is now through the roof.

When it came to recruiting, however, Fulmer discussed an era where he had a particular level of talent, and that was recruiting the Carolinas. As he noted, North Georgia is a big area for Tennessee football to gain talent, and he was asked specifically about recruiting North Carolina. However, he talked about recruiting both Carolina states. Here’s a bit of what he said on that.

"“The mountains should not be a barrier. We’re closer to North Carolina 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.”"

Currently, two three-stars from North Carolina are committed to the Vols’ 2021 recruiting class: running back Jaylen Wright and defensive tackle Isaac Washington. Four-star wide receiver Jalin Hyatt is a commitment from South Carolina in UT’s 2020 class.

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On the roster right now, there are three players from South Carolina: Defensive backs Kenney Solomon and Bryce Thompson along with punter Paxton Brooks. Meanwhile, defensive back Tyus Fields and linebacker Quavaris Crouch are both from North Carolina.

However, in Fulmer’s time, Tennessee football made a living with elite talent from those areas. Guys like Heath Shuler, Jay Graham, Leonard Little and Shawn Bryson all came from North Carolina. Meanwhile, superstar defensive linemen in particular like Darwin Walker, Shaun Ellis and Albert Haynesworth all came from South Carolina.

Plenty of other elite players came from those areas too. Simply put, Fulmer knows what he’s talking about, and Tennessee football does need to make sure it gets into those areas. Of course, it’s trickier now with Dabo Swinney coaching the Clemson Tigers, but things are still possible.

What’s clear is very few people understand the recruiting landscape and coaching linemen better than Fulmer, and his takes on both of those were deadly accurate here. When he talks about such things, people should listen.