Home Sweet Home: David Sanders

The "5-star plus" OT committed to Tennessee on August 17

Had this one in the hopper, ready to go. Check out previous recruit profiles here.

Sanders’ Providence Day School team went 12-1 in 2023, winning the state title in North Carolina’s NCISAA division. I won’t pretend to know a lot about private school football in NC, but I do work at a school in Georgia that plays in a similar league, and while the overall competition isn’t the same as you’d find in say, 7A Georgia football, those kind of schools get some very talented players from time to time (Providence Day is the same school that produced Vol basketball legend Grant Williams, after all). And Sanders, as he should be, is absolutely dominant against the competition he faces in that league.

Hudl Film

Full junior highlight film can be found here. Bring syrup, it’s a stack of pancakes. For instance:

He’s athletic, too, which opens up all manner of possibilities in the run game for tackle power/trap plays:

One thing a lot of these highly-recruited players have in common on their high school film is less-than-perfect technique. When you have an SEC-type body, you’re spending most Friday nights matched up with players smaller, slower, and weaker than you are. That goes double when you’re playing small private school ball. And because you’re bigger and stronger than you competition, you don’t have to use great technique to beat them. Despite that fact, Sanders does play with great technique, even though he probably wouldn’t have to, keeping a good, powerful base in his lower body and leveraging pad level even when he’s against smaller competition. I tried to capture some images that show this:

Maybe Kinda Like

Tennessee has signed five 5-star offensive tackles since 2000. Four of them—Ja'Wuan James, Trey Smith, Wanya Morris, and Darnell Wright—weighed 300+ pounds coming out of high school. Only Michael Munoz at 290 was as light as Sanders is (reported at anywhere between 275-290). I don’t know what weight UT would want Sanders to play at, but with the Vols’ up-tempo offense, and with how good edge rushers are in this league, the more athletic your tackles are, the better.

Four of those five players also made it to the NFL. Only Munoz, who was a consensus All-American in 2004, didn’t make the league, and that had more to do with his history of injuries than his playing ability. So although I usually point out in these profiles that I’m just making comparisons based on size, position, and raking, the bar is obviously set high for a player like Sanders at Tennessee.