baron, whose father is patrick abernathy (tennessees coordinator of high school relations), returned to rocky top to visit specifically with pruitt, tracy rocker and brian niedermeyer. The 6-foot-4, 245-pound rising junior walked away impressed and with a new offer in hand.
id heard a lot of great things about them but i wanted to see for myself actually what kind of people they are and what theyre trying to build at tennessee, baron told volquest.com. we really discussed how i could help tennessee football get back to what its supposed to be. They want to keep a lot of the best players in state and bring back the tradition.
coach pruitt sees my playing tight end or defensive end, baron said. Possibly both for the vols. It was good to hear what he thinks i could do for them and how i could help them. thats what today was all about, he said. i was pretty comfortable with coach (butch) jones and i wanted to see if it felt like the same way. I wanted to see if it was going to really be like family up there.
they were all great guys. It was good.
by the end of saturday afternoon, baron was feeling right at home, and rocker and niedermeyer were already joking about who would get to coach him. The in-state sophomore replaced antonutti, who bumped inside to tackle, at tight end for the tigers and also played a ton of snaps on defense. With two more years of high school ball, baron projects as defensive end in tennessee's new scheme. He said with his quick hands and long arms, pass rushing comes more naturally than playing offense, but im open to playing whatever helps the team.theyre going to have to fight over me a little bit, he said, laughing.
i havent really narrowed it down to any schools but tennessee, with my dad and them being 2.5 hours down the road, thats going to pull on me a lot, he said. just my ties to knoxville.
