Josh Heupel is on the verge of accomplishing impressive feat and it should be getting more national attention that it is

Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel is on the verge of accomplishing something incredibly impressive and it's not getting nearly enough national attention.

On Saturday, 2026 five-star quarterback Faizon Brandon is set to announce his commitment .

Brandon, 6-foot-4/197 lbs from Greensboro, NC, is rated by 247Sports as the No. 1 overall player in the 2026 recruiting class.

And the expectation is that he'll commit to Tennessee on Saturday. The Vols have done a tremendous job with Brandon's recruitment since first offering him last summer. He's essentially been Tennessee's only quarterback target in the 2026 class.

If Brandon ends up committing to the Vols on Saturday as expected, it will be the second No. 1 overall recruit in the nation to commit to Tennessee in the last 30 months (2023 five-star quarterback Nico Iamaleava, now a redshirt freshman at UT, was rated as the No. 1 overall player in the nation by On3 .)

Landing the No. 1 overall player in two out of the last four recruiting cycles isn't something that's even been on the table for Tennessee over the last 20 years. But Heupel, rather quickly I might add, has managed to not only get the Vols involved in the battle for the top recruit in the nation the last couple of years, but he's winning some of those battles, too.

The Vols are on a roll under Heupel. It's been a bit of a slow burn -- Heupel has been deliberate about not taking shortcuts to find recruiting success -- but things are really starting to pick up over the last couple of months for Tennessee when it comes to recruiting.

And it seems like Heupel's recruiting momentum -- specifically when it comes to potentially landing a commitment from Brandon on Saturday -- isn't receiving the proper amount of attention from the national media.

Maybe that's because there's been misguided hype around the Vols before when coaches like Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt were leading the program. And maybe that's fair.

But the folks who aren't watching the Vols closely right now are missing out on the beginning stages of what could be the next juggernaut in college football. There's still work to be done on Rocky Top, but the Vols are clearly on the path to being elite under Heupel. And right now, it's hard to see anything stopping that momentum.

Related: Tennessee OC Joey Halzle makes honest admission about Vols' 2023 offense that should make fans feel better about 2024