“It was probably one of the best visits that I’ve had so far,” said Williams, who’s ranked the No. 88 overall prospect and No. 19 wide receiver in the 247Sports Composite for the 2020 class. “To me, those were the best facilities I’ve seen. The coaches, they’re all nice. With
Derrick Ansley, I’ve got one of the best relationships with him out of all the coaches I’ve met. He’s known me since I was a sophomore. “I was interested a little bit, but now I’ve got a lot more interest in Tennessee now. … They’re up there.”
The 6-foot-3.5, 192-pound Williams said Tennessee already had “been recruiting me hard” since giving him an offer in late November, and the Vols have “wanted me to come up there for the longest now.” He said Tennessee head coach
Jeremy Pruitt has visited his school, and he “wanted to see what they were talking about.”
But Williams admitted the Vols’ hiring of Ansley, who previously recruited him at Alabama, was “one of the main reasons I went to Tennessee on Saturday. He said he’s glad he made the trip. “I wanted to visit because they came up to the school and my head coach was like, ‘It’s a real nice place.’ He’s been up there,” Williams said. “I wondered what it would look like, so I just wanted to check it out. “It really surpassed my expectations for what I thought it was going to be. It was more than what I expected.”
“One of the main reasons (I like Tennessee), really, is coach
Tee Martin. I had a great conversation with him when I was there, and he’s just a real coach. He’s going to be straight to the point. He’s not going to hide anything. He’s going to tell you how it is.” Martin’s history of producing NFL wide receivers during his previous stint at USC caught Williams’ attention. “He told me about how he coached at USC and coached JuJu (Smith-Schuster) and all those guys, and Adoree’ Jackson,” Williams said of Martin. “He said he’s actually got some dudes. JuJu, I think he was the number-one safety coming out of high school, and he transferred him to a high-caliber wide receiver playing with the Pittsburgh Steelers now.”
“They were basically telling me that they’re losing four seniors and a tight end (who is a) senior and that, if I just come in and apply myself, put the work in, I’ll get a chance to actually start,” he said. “(Martin) likes that I can get the jump ball and I’ve got really good routes, too, and I’m real lengthy. And I can catch balls in traffic — things like that. “He likes that I’m not just a one-dimensional guy.”
