Joel Wyatt arrived in Knoxville with a lot of buzz and not a lot of certainty about where he’d end up lining up. That part changed during his senior year of high school, when the former top-100 prospect began leaning toward the secondary. Tennessee first plugged him in at safety earlier this year, but when preseason camp opened, the Vols shifted the 6-foot-4, 210-pound freshman again - this time to cornerback.
The timing made sense. Tennessee lost Miami transfer Jadais Richard to a season-ending injury before the first preseason practice, and the cornerback room needed help. On Tuesday morning, first-year cornerbacks coach Derek Jones laid out why Wyatt got the call.
“Well, at the time, we had a lot of numbers at safety, and we didn't have a lot of numbers at corner. We didn't have a lot of depth,” Jones said after Tennessee's practice Tuesday morning, explaining the Vols' decision to move Wyatt to cornerback.
Jones said the bigger issue was that Wyatt was still early in the learning curve at safety, where the communication demands can slow down a young player.
“And I'm just sitting there every day, and he's a young kid. And in the system, you have to know at safety exactly what to do.
The safeties are telling the corners what to do. And if you don't quite know what to do, it limits you from being able to play fast and play aggressive and play natural.
“But I'm looking at the kid out there, the way he runs. Again, as a corner coach, you dream of having somebody with that arm length, that wingspan, that athleticism. So I just went to [defensive coordinator Jim] Knowles one day and was like, 'Hey, man, you mind if I take this guy for a couple days and see if I can do something with him?'
“And at that point in time, he wasn't in our two-man rotation at safety, so Coach Knowles was on the same page with me, and so was [secondary] coach [Anthony] Poindexter.”
Wyatt’s profile is the kind that makes coaches want to keep experimenting. The Shelbyville, Tenn., native played at The Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tenn., before transferring to Oakland last year.
247Sports ranked him as the No. 63 overall prospect, the No. 3 athlete and the No. 3 player from Tennessee in the 2026 class. In the industry-generated 247Sports Composite, he was a four-star, the No. 71 overall player, the No. 4 athlete and the No. 2 player from the state.
For now, Wyatt doesn’t look like he’s headed for a major role as a freshman. Ty Redmond and Auburn transfer Kayin Lee are the likely favorites to start at cornerback, while sophomores Tre Poteat and Timothy Merritt have put themselves in position to help off the bench.
Even so, Jones sounded convinced that Wyatt has the kind of tools that can play anywhere in the secondary - and maybe settle in at corner for good.
“And once we got him out there, I think we all agreed, you know, with some time and learning to play the position, and understanding the ins and outs of it, I think we've got something that most people are going to wish they had,” Jones said of Wyatt.
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