By JOHN MOOREHOUSE
Recruiting season for the 2026 college football season is winding down and spring football will be here before we know it.
ETSU football has nearly 50 new players who have joined the program, a significant replenishment necessitated by graduation and the transfer portal. We recently wrote about one of them, Kingsport native Sam Browder, a redshirt freshman offensive lineman who transferred to ETSU from Memphis.
Which of these new faces figure to make the biggest impact? We’ve made our best guesses and, in the return of The Friday 5, run down (in no particular order) the five most intriguing additions to the ETSU football roster.
DL T.A. Cunningham
In this era of the transfer portal, does a junior college transfer count as entering through the portal? This may be the football writer equivalent of the old riddle about, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? But I digress … Cunningham was a very highly-touted player in high school and a consensus four-star prospect who, at one time, was rated as five stars by On3. At 6-6 and 270 pounds, he’s got good size for the position. Cunningham started his college career at Penn State, where he sat out the entire 2024 campaign, then left for Garden City Community College.
His stats don’t jump off the page (5 tackles, 3 TFL, 2 sacks in 3 games) but his potential does. He was 6-5 and 285 when he signed with Penn State, so he’s gotten taller and leaned up. He’s also never spent longer than a year at any one school; he went to four different high schools in as many years. Time will tell what Cunningham can contribute, but the tools and physical measurables appear to be there.
QB Jadyn Davis
Speaking of hype, Davis had boatloads of it when he signed with Michigan out of high school. The 6-1, 207-pound Davis was both North Carolina’s Mr. Football and Gatorade Player of the Year in back-to-back seasons. Davis played sparingly at Michigan — only seeing the field three times across two seasons in Ann Arbor. He’s not the biggest guy at his position — far from it — but Michigan fans were pretty excited to sign him following his prep exploits in North Carolina’s private school division. Maize N Brew wrote,
“On the field, Davis is reflective of the recent trend in top quarterbacks — he is smaller than the prototype for the position, but is mobile and can throw on the run. Davis measures in at just under 6-foot-1 and weighs 195 pounds, which is the biggest factor holding him back from an even higher ranking. However, Davis doesn’t need to rely on his size due to his incredible accuracy and ability to go off-script. On tape, Davis shows his ability to lead his receivers and maximize the potential for yards after the catch. His accuracy works for both intermediate throws across the field and deep balls down the sideline. In the red zone, Davis will place the ball where only his receiver can come down with it, whether that be a back shoulder throw or a jump ball.”
QB Mason Mims
For the second straight year, the ETSU signing class includes a pair of quarterbacks from power conference programs. Joining Davis in that category is Mims, a 6-3, 210-pound redshirt freshman from Alabama who spent last season watching from the sideline and working with the scout team at Louisville. Mims was a consensus three-star prospect out of high school who had some gaudy number: 8,400 yards and 89 touchdowns. Then again, the annals of college football are full of quarterbacks who lit it up in high school but couldn’t recapture that form at the next level.
An SI.com article from 2023 evaluating Mims’ game said the following: “… accuracy and decision making is Mims’ calling card. He puts a fantastic touch on the football in the short and intermediate areas of the field. Add in some great anticipation on his throws, he routinely puts the ball where either only his man can get it, or where it will hit him in stride. … Overall, this is a great pickup for Louisville. … he’s already very far along in terms of how he reads the field and where he needs to put the football. He’s probably not a candidate to see meaningful snaps as a freshman, but will likely be a very viable candidate for the starting job by his sophomore season in college.”
P Luke Stewart
I’m a big believer in the importance of the kicking game and the Bucs have a large hole there left at punter, where three-year starter Nate Bracket must be replaced. Brackett received multiple Southern Conference honors, most notably first-team all-league by the coaches in 2023. His likely replacement looks to be Stewart, a 6-2, 180-pound redshirt sophomore from Hattiesburg in Mississippi. Stewart initially signed on with his hometown school, Southern Miss, but spent last season in junior college at Jones College, also located in Mississippi. His numbers were more than respectable: a 39.8 yard average on punts and, most significantly, 40.5% (15 of 37) of his kicks were downed inside the 20.
LB Jarvis Johnson, Jr.
The linebacking corps has been a keystone to the ETSU defense through the years and, if that trend is to continue in 2026, Johnson probably needs to play a prominent role. He’s a 5-11, 220-pound redshirt sophomore from Miami who logged 10 total appearances for FAU. He can also make an impact on special teams; last season against rival FIU, he blocked and returned a punt for a touchdown. One of the top 20 players in the state of Florida — he was rated 17th — in the class of 2023, Johnson’s high school stats show a hint of his potential: 114 tackles, 30 stops for loss, and four sacks.