Tennessee hosted a number of their top targets on visits this past weekend during UT’s final home game of the 2019 season. One of those visitors came in with little fanfare and was a surprise to the public.
Matt Ray of VR2 — our recruiting partner at RTI — reported on Monday that four-star defensive tackle and Georgia commit Nazir Stackhouse was one of the visitors on Tennessee’s campus for the Vanderbilt game. Stackhouse’s relationship with Vol defensive line commit Tracy Rocker has kept UT involved, and the Vols are in an interesting position moving forward with the four-star Bulldog commit.
Stackhouse was one of the first offers Jeremy Pruitt made after he was hired on as Tennessee’s head coach. Pruitt offered the talented defensive lineman on December 9, 2017. That was just a week after he committed to the Bulldogs and was before teams like Alabama, Florida, LSU, and Texas A&M offered him.
According to Ray’s interview with Stackhouse, some of the biggest appeals for the talented defensive lineman is the fact that Tennessee’s coaches have helped develop many future NFL players and that UT runs a similar defensive scheme to what Stackhouse plays at Columbia down in Decatur, Georgia.
“I can see myself fitting into that defense really well,” Stackhouse told Ray. “The three-man front, mixed in with a four-man front is kind of what we run at my school with a strong interior and a fast outside rush.”
Stackhouse is the No. 273 overall player and No. 25 defensive tackle in the 2020 class per the 247Sports Composite rankings. The 6-foot-3, 305-pound lineman visited the Vols back in May, and this weekend’s trip won’t be the only time he pays a visit to Tennessee this winter. According to Stackhouse, the Vols will be getting an official visit in January, the final month before National Signing Day in February.
The four-star defensive tackle participated in Nike’s The Opening Finals after impressing at a regional camp in March. He ran a 5.35-second 40-yard dash and showed off a 4.74-second shuttle run while measuring a 27.3-inch vertical leap.
Stackhouse also discusses who hosted him on his visit, goes more into detail about the developmental ability of Tennessee’s coaches, and more in his interview with Matt Ray. You can read the full interview with Stackhouse over on VR2 here.
