After spending the weekend visiting with some of Tennessee’s top targets and commitments, Vols coach Josh Heupel and his staff scattered across the country Monday to begin the first full week of the contact period leading up to Early Signing Day. With the transfer portal now being open to all underclassmen, the Vols started scouring the transfer market while also checking on targets from coast to coast in the 2024 class and future classes.

Heupel traveled to Las Vegas on Monday, stopping at Arbor View High School to extend a scholarship offer to four-star Class of 2025 linebacker Christian Thatcher. Heupel checked on a few other highly ranked Class of 2025 players in the area, too, including Top247 prospects Seuseu Alofaituli, Douglas Utu, Derek Meadows and Alai Kalaniuvalu of Las Vegas’ Bishop Gorman High School.

Jackson Ross started his first full season at Tennessee with a shaky performance in the season opener against Virginia before becoming a reliable part of the special-teams battery for the Vols. The 24-year-old Australian punter reaped one of the rewards from his impressive redshirt freshman season in 2023 on Thursday when he was tabbed as Tennessee’s lone selection to the SEC All-Freshman Team. The honor put him in some elite company – the last Vols punter to earn all-freshmen recognition from the league was Dustin Colquitt in 2001.

Tennessee was a late arrival to the movement of Australian punters in American college football when it added Ross to its 2022 recruiting class last summer, and he made the move to a new country just weeks before last season started.

After redshirting last season, Ross averaged 42.8 yards on 48 punts, ranking sixth overall in the SEC and third nationally among freshman punters, and helped Tennessee rank fifth in the SEC and 20th nationally in net punting.

GET 50% OFF AN ANNUAL VIP MEMBERSHIP TO GOVOLS247 – OR UPGRADE YOUR CURRENT MONTHLY SUB!

Ross pinned opponents inside their 20-yard line 18 times and had nine punts of 50+ yards. His career-long punt was a 71-yard kick at Alabama in October. Ross set a program record in that game, totaling 266 yards on five punts for a 53.2-yard average – the best single-game average (minimum five punts) in Tennessee history, bettering the 53.0-yard average achieved twice by Jimmy Colquitt (Auburn 1983 and LSU 1982).

His 71-yard punt was the longest by the Vols since 2018.

Ross, who could kick with both his right and left foot and was effective with his Aussie-style rollout punts, was a key part of Tennessee’s win against Texas A&M in October, his punt down to the Aggies 1-yard line starting a sequence that ended in Dee Williams returning a punt for what proved to be the winning touchdown.

Tennessee allowed just 5 net yards on seven punt returns during the entire season, which ranked third in the SEC and fifth in the FBS.

Ross played Australian Rules Football for Hawthorn Football Club for three years after attending Haileybury College in his native Melbourne. Tennessee found him as part of the Prokick Australia program, which has sent countless punters to American college football – just two of the 14 SEC teams did not have Aussie punters this season. Ross has maintained relationships with several college punters from his homeland, including Iowa’s Tory Taylor – who will be his counterpart when the Vols face the Hawkeyes in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl in Orlando on New Year’s Day.

Tennessee had three players – defensive end James Pearce Jr. (first team), running back Jaylen Wright (second team) and center Cooper Mays (second team) – selected to the Associated Press All-SEC teams earlier this week, but Pearce, a first-team choice, was the lone All-SEC selection by the league’s coaches.