Thompson High School boasted the best quarterback and one of the best offenses in Alabama in the fall of 2018. But on a mid-October night in Trussville, Will Brooks twice intercepted Alabama commit Taulia Tagovailoa in the red zone as Vestavia Hills held the Warriors to their second lowest scoring output of the season and nearly upset one of the state’s top teams.
Long before Will Brooks was the back-end anchor of Tennessee’s best defense in two decades, he was flying under the radar and producing in the top classification of Alabama high school football.
Here’s how a high school lacrosse All-American, zero-star football recruit that grew up 65 miles from the University of Alabama became the unlikely rock in Tennessee’s secondary.
“I think Will makes people around him better,” former Vestavia Hills defensive backs coach Todd Evans told RTI. “I think that’s his greatest attribute.”
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Will Brooks Almost Played College Lacrosse
Will Brooks was far from a top football recruit coming out of Birmingham. Instead drawing more college interest for his play in lacrosse.
“For the longest time, we thought lacrosse was going to be his sport,” John Brooks, Will’s father, told RTI.
Brooks was a high school All-American, according to US Lacrosse, but there’s little big-time lacrosse played in the Yellowhammer State. Brooks played travel lacrosse for 3D Georgia and traveled to Atlanta for practices on spring weekends before frequently flying to the Northeast in the summer to play in tournaments.
“Will’s not one to put all of his eggs in one basket,” Evans said of Brooks playing lacrosse in the summer. “He’s truly a well-rounded person.”
That’s not to say that football was an afterthought for Brooks either. He earned a starting spot early in his sophomore year at Vestavia Hills. With the Rebels running a 4-4 defense against Huffman High School’s stout rushing attack, Brooks made four touchdown saving, open-field tackles when Vestavia busted assignments up front.
“It wasn’t hard to figure out to play Will,” Evans said. “I mean, it’s not like I was some clairvoyant. Will was good from the beginning and I could tell just talking to him that there was something different about it.”
Even as a sophomore, Brooks ability to quickly see and interpret what was happening was a major strength. His football intelligence gave Vestavia’s coaches confidence in him to call the defense in the back end while his ability to not “take false steps” helped make up for a lack of top-end speed.
“He could get us in the right coverage and make sure we were right where we needed to be and he could get all the others lined up,” former Vestavia Hills head coach Buddy Anderson told RTI. “Everyone depended on him and he could make sure they were all lined up for what we needed to do with our defense.”
But instead of going all in on football, Brooks continued to play lacrosse— a sport he excelled at since elementary school.
His play generated interest from a number of top lacrosse schools including Notre Dame, North Carolina, Denver and Ohio State. However, scholarships are limited in lacrosse and none of those schools ever pulled the trigger on an athletic scholarship, simply offering guaranteed roster spots with Brooks’ performance in the classroom positioning him for academic scholarships.
What sport Brooks would have chosen if a lacrosse program pulled the trigger on a scholarship is the great question in his athletic journey.
“If a lacrosse school (offer) happened, I would have considered doing it,” Will Brooks told RTI. “I always knew I wanted to play football so that would have been a big decision. I honestly don’t know what my answer would have been at that point in time. Whether or not I would have still pursued football or 100% stuck with lacrosse, I don’t really know.”
“We kept asking him, ‘What do you like more, football or lacrosse?’” John Brooks added. “He would never give us a straight answer. Personally, and I thought he was a very good lacrosse player, I thought that was where he was going to go. But deep down, football was his first true love.”
How Will Brooks Ended Up At Tennessee
Despite the absence of scholarship offers, Will Brooks did not often grow discouraged during the recruiting process. However, his father remembers frustration materializing following a lacrosse recruiting conversation in October of Will’s senior year.
“I remember his senior year, having a sit down with him,” John Brooks said. “It was when Ohio State – which was probably the last real attention we got from lacrosse – the coach was very honest with us and just said you’re on the outside looking in from a scholarship standpoint. We’re still interested in you but we’re probably not going to offer.
“He was really down and I think that’s when he made his decision that he really wanted to focus on football.”
That October meeting wasn’t the first inflection point directing Brooks towards football, however. After largely spurning summer football camps and combines early in high school, banking on game film to be enough for him to garner recruiting interest, Brooks attended a Vanderbilt camp and Nike SPARQ combine ahead of his senior year.
It was already too late in the recruiting process for Brooks to generate an abundance of interest. But by performing well at both events, Brooks started to garner more football attention whether it was from FCS schools or a preferred walk-on opportunity at Vanderbilt.
On the field, Brooks kept on getting better. By his senior year, he was a Second Team All-Alabama free safety behind only Malachi Moore, a four-star recruit who signed with the Crimson Tide. While he was still unranked by 247sports with no FBS offers, his play gave him confidence that he was good enough to play in the SEC.
“You can’t look inside the heart of somebody,” Anderson said. “Will had the little things. Let’s put it this way, he had the ‘it’ factor.”
While the budding Brooks kept making plays against top high school competition, Tennessee was looking for a walk-on defensive back. Then-head coach Jeremy Pruitt had no shortage of connections in Birmingham, but the relationship between Vols inside linebackers coach Kevin Sherrer and Evans put everything in motion for Brooks to end up at Tennessee.
Brooks first visited Tennessee for the 2019 UAB game. The lifelong Auburn fan instantly felt at home on Rocky Top.
“He went to Knox and fell in love and he went up there and visited for a game and he came back, he said, ‘That’s where I want to go to school,’” Evans said.
Brooks and his father returned for another visit in January. That’s when things finally fell in place. Pruitt offered Brooks a preferred walk-on spot, the only SEC school besides Vanderbilt to do so, and the 6-foot-1, 178-pound safety jumped at the opportunity.
“I just realized that I really wanted to pursue football and wanted to go all out for football,” Brooks said. “Because I loved playing football. Being able to have the opportunity to potentially go play at a big SEC school like Tennessee, that was kind of when I was like, ‘I want to do this.’”
Checking Off Goals
Walking the tightrope of self belief and realism is an extreme challenge for any athlete.
That’s what Will and John strove for when discussing Will’s goals for each college season. Will believed he could become a real contributor for Tennessee. He also was aware that it wouldn’t happen overnight.
Dressing out during his freshman season. Check. Traveling with the team and playing on return units as a redshirt freshman. Check, again.
And while chaos and uncertainty were the only constants during Brooks’ first two seasons at Tennessee, that proved to be a good thing for Brooks. COVID-19 kept players out of practice throughout the 2020 season and the mass exodus following the NCAA investigation and Pruitt’s ensuing termination created more practice opportunities for Brooks.
“If there’s such a thing as a transfer portal proof kid, I think that’s Will because I think the second Tennessee showed loyalty to Will Brooks, Will Brooks showed loyalty to Tennessee because they kind of gave him a chance that nobody else was really giving him,” Evans said.
When Tennessee’s new staff arrived in January 2021, it didn’t take them long to notice the same things about their second-year safety that the Vestavia Hills staff noticed four years prior. Brooks was the first to understand concepts and answer questions as Tennessee installed its defense.
“You knew right away,” Tennessee defensive backs coach Willie Martinez said on when he knew Brooks could play at the SEC level. “He immediately makes an impact as we go through practice, drill after drill, very consistent.”
Brooks kept on earning more opportunities and checking off more yearly goals. Play on more special teams units as a redshirt sophomore. Check.
And when he started making plays on special teams, like recovering a fumble at LSU, he turned his attention to playing more on defense during the 2023 season. Injuries presented opportunities late in the year and Brooks checked off another goal by playing extensively in SEC games against Georgia and Vanderbilt.
“It didn’t surprise me one bit when I saw him play some last year in some of their packages,” Anderson said. “I said, ‘I’m not so sure he might not be starting for them next year.’”
Gaining experience and confidence set the stage for Brooks’ final goal as a college football player.
“This year, my goal was to start and be a productive player,” Brooks said. “Do my job and have a great season.”
One final check.
Brooks has started every game for Tennessee this season, performing at a high level for the Vols’ overachieving secondary. Halfway through the season, he’s Tennessee’s fourth highest-graded defender according to PFF and has played his best in the Vols’ biggest games.
As Tennessee plays host to Alabama on the Third Saturday in October, there will be an inordinate amount of people rooting for the Big Orange 65 miles east of Tuscaloosa.
“I’m an Alabama guy,” Evans said. “And here’s one of my favorite people playing for Tennessee. So I get torn. I’m always pulling for Will Brooks. I don’t care if they’re playing Alabama or not because I’m a bigger Will Brooks fan than I ever would be an Alabama fan.”
