Tennessee football: Kaden Martin to Miami makes worst recruiting week ever

Last week, after Tennessee football lost out on in-state quarterback Ty Simpson as he picked the Alabama Crimson Tide, we wrote an article on why Vol fans shouldn’t panic. Five days later, we still stand by that article, but we’ve had to revise it to why not to panic over three elite quarterbacks picking other schools.

Two days after Simpson’s commitment to Alabama, another one of the Vols’ top quarterback prospects, Sam Horn out of Georgia, committed to the Missouri Tigers on Twitter. Both Horn and Simpson grew up in a household of hardcore Vol fans, so losing both made it more painful.

Then, on Wednesday, Tennessee football arguably suffered its biggest loss of all. The Vols lost out on another elite in-state prospect, only this time, he was a local prospect and a legacy player. Kaden Martin, the son of Tee Martin, announced he had committed to the Miami Hurricanes.

So within a week, the Vols lost out on three 2022 quarterbacks who are 247Sports Composite four-stars, all of whom grew up connected to Rocky Top, two of whom are in-state and one of whom is a local product and the son of a legendary UT player. Simply put, that’s the worst recruiting week in school history.

What the Vols did to the Ole Miss Rebels by landing Peyton Manning, son of Archie Manning, back in 1994, other teams are now doing to the Vols. Heck, Horn committed to Mizzou, a program UT fans would never consider to be on their level.

This all means that new head coach Josh Heupel, hired due to his experience as a quarterback guru, is still looking for his first commitment at the position for the Vols. Right now, the 2022 class still has no commitments.

Now, these losses were predictable. Tennessee football is still in the midst of an NCAA investigation and just went through a coaching change. Also, Martin isn’t the first son of Tee Martin to play elsewhere. In 2017, as the program was about to fall apart under Butch Jones, Amari Rodgers decided to commit to the Clemson Tigers.

The Vols also have other quarterbacks on the roster who may make for too much competition in 2022, particularly Harrison Bailey and Kaidon Salter. That combined with a lot of quarterbacks still available to target still make these losses nothing to panic over just yet.

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Rocky Top needs this investigation to be over, and Heupel needs time to spend with recruits. He’s only been on the job for a month, and he just finished filling out his staff this week. One of the names still isn’t even official yet.

None of that changes the fact, though, that the Vols truly did have an awful recruiting week. In any other year, they would have landed at least one of those quarterbacks. Heck, if you go back to their heyday, they would have landed two of them, with both embracing competition.

Who doesn’t remember 2004, when both Erik Ainge and Brent Schaeffer committed and Brian Brohm still almost committed as well? Then there’s 2015. Just the illusion that UT was coming back allowed Butch Jones to sign three four-star quarterbacks in Sheriron Jones, Quinten Dormady and, yes, Jauan Jennings.

Of course, most notable among these is 1994, when the Vols signed Manning and Branndon Stewart. When Tennessee football is rolling, it can land elite prospects from anywhere in any class. That’s what made this past week painful for so many fans.