After Josh Heupel’s strong first season cleared up some of the questions facing the Tennessee football program, the Vols landed five four-star recruits in November and December.
Tennessee is off to a fast start in its 2023 recruiting class in large part due to something it didn’t do in the 2022 cycle — landing recruits in the ‘Volunteer State’.
Heupel made recruiting Tennessee’s home state since the moment that he took the job in Knoxville.
“The most important thing we do is lock down our borders,” Heupel said of recruiting at his introductory press conference. “We have to keep kids inside of this state here. That’s for multiple reasons. They’re going to come play championship caliber football, they’re going to be developed, they’re going to have a chance to move on to the NFL, they’re going to get a great degree and they’re going to be empowered to live inside of this state once they are done with that degree, but we have to do that inside of our own borders.”
However, walking into a program with the cloud of the NCAA over it Heupel and his staff struggled to find early recruiting success — especially inside its home state.
The Vols landed just two recruits from within their own borders in the 2022 recruiting class including only one — Cameron Miller — in the top 20.
On April 19, Tennessee has five commits from the Volunteer State and three in the state’s top 20. Caleb Herring — the state’s No. 1 player — became the third top 20 commit on Tuesday.
Tennessee narrowly missed out on blue chip recruits Walter Nolan, Ty Simpson, Keaton and Destin Wade as well as Isaiah Horton.
Even though the 2023 instate recruiting pool isn’t as impressive as the 2022 cycle’s, Tennessee is looking to build a foundation of a top 10 class within its borders.
The Vols are looking to do more damage within their own borders and are in the top group for Knoxville receiver Adarius Redmond and Chattanooga interior lineman Brycen Sanders.
Herring’s commit didn’t just bolster its instate recruiting haul on Tuesday but continued its climb up the team rankings.
Tennessee entered the day No. 10 in the 247sports composite rankings and moved up one spot to No.8. However, the Vols made a major jump from outside the top 10 in the On3 consensus rankings to the No. 7 spot.
In Heupel’s first full recruiting class, Tennessee landed the nation’s No. 18 recruiting class on 247sports and the nation’s No. 17 recruiting class in the On3 team rankings.
