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Tennessee’s coaching staff closed the deal with one of their top running back targets for the 2022 recruiting class. 4-star Justin Williams out of Dallas, Georgia announced his commitment to the Volunteers on Early Signing Day.
It’s the final part of an interesting saga for Williams, who decommitted from the West Virginia Mountaineers on November 17th. Tennessee got Williams on campus multiple times, both before and after his decommitment. The momentum was in Tennessee’s favor for weeks, and they staved off suitors like Auburn and Michigan for his pledge.
Williams has a similar story to a few other guys that are either committed to Tennessee, or a top target of the staff. Williams had a moderate recruitment during the summer, and looked destined to go to a middle tier Power-5 school. When his senior season began, it became obvious that Williams was much better than his ranking indicated.
Williams ended the season with 2,116 all purpose yards (1,896 of those were rushing yards), 14 touchdowns, and a 4.0 GPA to boot. He plays for East Paulding High School, which is in the 6A classification of Georgia high school football.
We wrote a summary of Williams’ strengths in a previous article. Here’s what we said about his tape and what he brings:
“Williams has a very nice acceleration out of the backfield, and he also has a penchant for backbreaking long runs. That should excite Tennessee fans who saw similar results from Tiyon Evans and Jabari Small throughout the season. Williams seems tailor made for the offense, and could step in and contribute right away, much like Jaylen Wright did this year...He’s very talented and could easily outplay his recruiting ranking.”
I’d add that his size is intriguing as well. Williams is a stout 6-foot and 205 pounds, and doesn’t go down easily. While he looks like a “speed” back similar to Jabari Small, I think he can bring another facet to the running back room.
Follow all of the signing day action throughout the day in our constantly updated tracker.