“I would say it lived up to the hype, if not better,” said Thomas, who’s ranked the No. 138 overall prospect and No. 20 offensive tackle in the industry-generated 247Sports Composite for the 2020 class. “To be honest with you, I liked the atmosphere — the atmosphere of the game, the fans. All the fans, regardless of the score, how they were still supporting their team no matter what, that just shows a lot. If you base that off of, like, if people are winning and how they’re doing when they’re winning, I think it’ll be real nice.”
“It was cool,” he said. “It’s just being able to experience my first game, get a chance to see the fans and stuff. I’m not really too sure anybody expected it to be kind of a close game, but I did see bits and pieces of Coach Pruitt and the coaching staff, a positive side of what they were doing. I can say that. “I just saw spurts of the team and what I think they can and what they can’t do. But I saw a lot of good things, if I’m being honest with you. It was pretty positive. Everything was pretty positive to me.
While most teams are recruiting Thomas as an offensive lineman, Tennessee is one of multiple teams that primarily have talked with him about playing him on the defensive line. Johnson spoke at length with Thomas after the game, and he said the Vols’ entire staff “showed me attention, made me feel important.”
“He didn’t really talk about the game as much, because he said he just believes in playing the next play and moving on,” Thomas said of Johnson. “He said nobody expected them to do something big that day. But he said that everybody’s going to continue to not expect them to do something big, but when they do, they’re going to be on the radar. “And he just sold that to me, saying, why not come and help them get on the radar? Because he was saying how he has a good recruiting class coming in and how Coach Pruitt isn’t playing with his players that he recruited. So just by him saying that, it’ll be interesting to see how they do with the recruits that come in.”
