Wanya Morris of the Tennessee football Volunteers is in the NCAA transfer portal.
To quote Ron Weasley, portrayed by Rupert Grint in the “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” film, can we panic now? Tennessee football appears to have now lost one of its most promising prospects, and it’s the biggest blow yet to the program.
David Ubben of The Athletic reports that offensive lineman Wanya Morris has entered the transfer portal. A four-star or five-star across all services back in 2019, Morris immediately started as a true freshman and earned Freshman All-American and All-SEC honors.
Despite an up and down sophomore campaign, no doubt impacted by COVID, Morris was still set to be a building block for Tennessee football trying to rebound from a 3-7 season entering Jeremy Pruitt’s fourth year. Losing the 6’5″ 320-pound tackle offsets any excuse in Pruitt’s favor and proves the program really is coming undone.
This is just one serious negative in a series of negatives dating back to the middle of the season that add up for the reasons to fire Pruitt. Obviously, going 3-7 and dramatically underachieving this past year got the ball rolling. A wave of decommitments that undid all the recruiting momentum Pruitt had in the summer hurt his case as well.
Add in the NCAA investigation during the final regular season game, the departure of Will Friend and the hiring freeze and freeze on contract extensions, and you can see how things are coming apart. It’s very telling that UT would lose its offensive line coach, be unable to hire another one and then see its top lineman transfer.
Up until this point, almost all of the transfers could be explained away by Pruitt making room for new talent. Even Deandre Johnson and Ty Chandler, who wer the biggest losses, had serious competition behind him. Shawn Shamburger’s return saved UT from a serious loss.
Morris, however, is devastating. There was nobody threatening his starting job, and this is a guy everybody assumed would become a superstar once things got back to normal this year. Without him, Rocky Top is in trouble.
If this departure is going to put Tennessee football’s future in jeopardy, it should put Pruitt’s future with UT in jeopardy as well. There’s no way anybody can say this isn’t a reflection on the direction of the program and everything that is happening right now.
Also, it’s likely that if Morris is entering the portal, more are going to follow. That could especially be the case on the offensive line, which took years to rebuild after Pruitt, to be fair, inherited a mess up front.
Just how depleted could the team be next year? What will Pruitt even have to work with? These are all concerns you have to raise now with a star like Morris entering the transfer portal, and it only adds to fan unrest.
There’s still a chance that Morris returns to Tennessee football, so we’ll have to wait and see how this all pans out, but it doesn’t look good for Pruitt right now. Losing a guy like Morris is another major case against him.