Jonathan Echols flips to South Florida

The longtime Tennessee commit will join Alex Golesh.

Longtime Tennessee commit Jonathan Echols won’t end up coming to Knoxville afterall. On Friday, the four-star athlete flipped his commitment to South Florida, where he’ll join former Tennessee offensive coordinator Alex Golesh.

Echols and Golesh obviously have a long-standing relationship as Golesh also coached tight ends during his time at Tennessee. The top 200 prospect projects as a tight end at the next level.

Echols was once viewed as a five-star prospect. He was ranked 25th overall in the class of 2024 at the time of his commitment to Tennessee, all the way back in July of 2022. Today, Echols is the 180th ranked player in the class, per the 247Sports Composite rankings.

So now Tennessee is left with a pretty dire need at tight end. They’ll return Ethan Davis and Emmanuel Okoye, but Jacob Warren and McCallan Castles are gone. That means the Volunteers currently have no experience at a pretty difficult position to learn. Tennessee has offered Notre Dame tight end Holden Staes, who will visit this weekend. Now with Echols out of the picture, does Tennessee take two transfers here? It certainly appears that they won’t be able to pull a high school kid at this point.

Remember, they have apparently canceled the visit of UConn tight end Justin Joly, which now feels a little more odd.

Tennessee is left with 19 commitments in their 2024 class, which remains ranked 12th in the country, per 247Sports.