A look at Dylan Sampson’s ascension to Vols’ RB1

Tennessee, and specifically QB Nico Iamaleava is getting dump-truck loads of national attention— and rightfully so with the level of poise and control the young signal caller has displayed in his three starts. But, junior Dylan Sampson, also just three games into his time as the leader of his position group, is not so subtly staking his claim as the spearhead of Tennessee’s offense.

Before we get there, though, some context is important.

Via the 247 Composite rankings, the Geismar, LA., prospect was given a three-star rating, listed as the 444th-ranked player nationally and the 15-ranked RB in Louisiana. Jerry Mack is listed as his primary recruiter, and while Mack is no longer here with De’Rail Sims in his first year as UT RB’s coach, the staff as a whole has shown an ability to be ahead of schedule on its evaluations and quickly initiate its pursuit of players who fit the system.

Sampson is a great example of that dynamic. As a 2022 signee, Tennessee was the second team to offer Sampson a scholarship on October 24th, 2019 — just one day after he got his first offer from Nicholls State (again, via 247’s timeline). He ended up with other offers from Northwestern, Mississippi State, Michigan State, Vanderbilt, Colorado, Cal and South Carolina among others, but took just four official visits to Purdue, Vanderbilt, Louisville and Tennessee. He visited Knoxville on June 11th, 2021 and committed two days later.

Sampson ran track in high school and was clocked at 10.48 in the 100-meter and 21.16 in the 200-meter during his junior year. Cranking out numbers like that as a 16-17 year-old kid undoubtedly caught the attention of the coaching staff as Heupel has embarked on a mission to catch up and keep pace with the kind of speed and athleticism needed across the board to compete at the conference and national level.

In his first year on campus, Sampson was added to a running-back room with veteran Jabari Small and Jaylen Wright. Along with QB Hendon Hooker, Sampson was the fourth player to rush for more than 400 yards in the year for a Vols’ rushing attack that finished 20th nationally in ground-yards per-contest (199.3) and 28th nationally in yards per-attempt (5.0).

In his total of 10 games played, Sampson ended the year with 411 yards on just 58 carries, which gave him the best yards-per-carry average on the team at 6.7. He and Jaylen Wright were the only two players on the team with rushes of 80 yards or more at 80 and 83 yards, respectively, — both of which occurred in the Vanderbilt game:

He had four runs of 25-plus yards that season — a 27-yard rush against Akron, a 45-yard rush against Akron, then once SEC play started, he carried the ball eight times for 98 yards against Missouri with a 42-yard long run and capped the regular season off against Vanderbilt with 12 carries for 131 yards and that 80-yard TD run above.

In his sophomore campaign, with Small and Wright still on the team, Sampson outproduced Small and finished second to Wright in attempts (107), total rushing yards (615), yards per-carry (5.7) but led the team in rushing TDs with seven. At least partially due to Sampson’s development, the Vols increased their productivity on the ground to the 8th-best rushing offense in the nation (202.8 yards per-game) and tied UGA’s 5.3 yards per-carry figure that ranked 10th in the NCAA.

He had runs of 10 or more yards in nine of 11 games, with a season-long rush of 44 yards against Texas San Antonio, when he ran the ball 11 times for 144 yards and two TDs.

One could see his big-play ability from the jump, but last year set the table for his maturation into the team’s No. 1 option at running back this season. This manifested in two critical but different circumstances: 1) Tennessee started to utilize him in the passing game much more last season than in 2022 and 2) when neither Small nor Wright played in the bowl game, and Sampson got his first shot as the Vols’ lead back.

He caught just three passes for 24 yards his freshman season, but those figures ballooned last year into 17 catches for 175 yards, one TD and chunk plays of 20, 37, 17 and 13 yards.

Then, in the Citrus Bowl vs. Iowa, when No. 21 Tennessee played No. 17 Iowa. Sampson and Iamaleava gave Tennessee a glimpse of what was to come this season. Nico sort-of stole the show with his performance, going 12-19 through the air for 151 yards and one TD while scoring three more times on the ground.

But Sampson carried the ball 20 times for 131 yards against a Hawkeye defense that had allowed just 3.1 yards per-run (9th-best in the nation) during the season and surrendered an average of 111-ish rushing yards a game, which ranked 14th in the nation.

Onto this season, and the picture of how high Sampson’s ceiling could be is falling into place. He’s leading the team in rushing with a whopping 262 yards on 32 carries, which ranks him 27th nationally at eight yards a run and has landed in the endzone five times (tied for fifth in the country).

Then he’s also third on the team behind Chris Brazzell (eight) and Bru McCoy (seven) in receptions with six for 66 yards, and I’d bet the farm Tennessee hasn’t even begun to really start squeezing the juice out of that orange.

With his 23-MPH recorded speed, the composure to follow his blocks and let runs develop along with his acceleration once he hits the hole and his ability to brush off defenders at the second level, Tennessee is getting multiple 10-15-yard plus gains in each game.

Against the Mocs, Tennessee’s tailback broke off four plays of 10 or more yards, including this 56-yard touchdown run at the 2:03 mark of the following video:

Sampson had six plays of 10 or more yards against NC State, including the 34-yarder when let the hole open up and outran the secondary defender getting to paydirt without hardly a paw put on him.

So he’s got 10 plays of 10-plus yards in five quarters so far this year, and he had four such plays against Iowa in the bowl game last year. In three games as Tennessee’s primary option out of the backfield, Sampson accumulated 461 total yards, 14 plays of 10 yards or more, and five scores.

Now this is an awfully small sample size with some qualifiers necessary about the level of competition, but there’s no doubt Sampson has taken the RB1 reins and literally ran away with them. Kent State will offer more stat-padding opportunities, then we’ll start to see Sampson against SEC competition and get a better idea of just how good he might be. But there’s no question so far it looks like the Vols have a home run in the former three-star recruit.