Birmingham, Ala. defensive tackle Tim Keenan III has the Tennessee football Volunteers in his top 10.
There’s no doubt that Jeremy Pruitt wants to add a couple more elite defensive linemen to the 2021 Tennessee football recruiting class, and he would also like to keep his pipeline into the state of Alabama. Over the weekend, he got closer to accomplishing both things.
The Vols made the cut for defensive tackle Tim Keenan III out of Ramsay High School in Birmingham, Ala. Standing at 6’3″ 325 pounds, Keenan is a four-star on Rivals, ESPN and 247Sports Composite. He is a three-star on 247Sports.
In addition to Tennessee football, Keenan had the the Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs, LSU Tigers, Ole Miss Rebels, North Carolina Tar Heels, Nebraska Cornhuskers, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Oregon Ducks and UAB Blazers on his list. He announced his top 10 on Twitter Saturday.
As of right now, Tennessee football has two defensive tackles committed for 2021 in three-star Isaac Washington out of Pilot Mountain, N.C. and four-star KaTron Evans out of Baltimore, Md. Evans is the second four-star defensive tackle out of St. Frances High School in Maryland in two years, following Dominic Bailey in the Vols’ 2020 class.
However, Pruitt clearly likes to run a deep rotation up front in his 3-4 scheme, so he will definitely want more help. After all, Darel Middleton, Savion Williams and Aubrey Solomon are all seniors in the rotation this year who will be gone by 2021. Although Pruitt has guys in place to take over, he still needs more commitments to build depth up front.
As of right now, the state of Alabama is also playing a huge role in UT’s top five ranking. Of the Vols’ 24 commitments, six come from that state. Pruitt’s connections there seem to be paying off, and he may not be done.
Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide are a unanimous favorite to land Keenan on the Rivals Future Cast and a majority favorite on the Rivals Fan Future Cast. However, there are no 247Sports Crystal Ball predictions yet, indicating that not too much analysis has been done on Keenan so far. Because of that, Tennessee football could still be in strong contention.