3-star running back Will Stallings Jr. commits to Tennessee

An intriguing athlete all the way from Las Vegas commits.

3-star running back Will Stallings Jr. made a surprise announcement on Sunday afternoon, committing to the Volunteers just two weeks after receiving an offer from the staff.

Stallings attends Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Nevada—the same high school that current Tennessee star receiver Cedric Tillman hails from. Stallings is ranked as the 1,188th overall player and the 91st linebacker, according to the 247Sports Composite Rankings. While he is ranked as a linebacker, Stallings’ future college position is not yet known. His recent tape is exclusively at running back, and the commitment image above shows that he views himself as a running back at the next level.

Tennessee offered Stallings not too long ago—he tweeted the offer announcement on June 6th. Stallings had attended a camp session and the Tennessee staff was immediately interested. The offer was not immediate, but Tennessee did eventually decide to give him a committable one after looking over the tape.

Stallings could go either way with his future position. He moves very well for his size and has a pretty nice trucking ability as a running back. He could fill the more traditional power back role for short yardage situations. But the same qualities make him intriguing as a linebacker, and you wonder if Tennessee would like his physicality on the defensive side.

I also think the Volunteers have a pretty solid running back rotation right now, and I don’t know if someone like Stallings could come in and break into the first few strings. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say Stallings starts out as running back, but the staff encourages him to switch over to middle linebacker eventually. There is still a lot of time to see how he develops and for the staff to see where their roster needs more help.

Stallings is the 10th commitment of the 2023 recruiting class. The Volunteers rank 12th overall in the team class rankings on 247.