Will Rajecki

Physical Profile

Listed 5-foot-11, 199 pounds at signing and up to roughly 208 pounds on Tennessee's roster entering fall camp 2026 — a nine-pound gain in his first offseason, which is a positive early indicator of how he handles a college strength program. The build is a true one-cut/downhill frame: low center of gravity, thick lower half, enough natural mass to run through arm tackles at the high school level without being a pure short-yardage body. At 5-11 he projects to carry 212-218 pounds comfortably without losing burst, which is the target weight for an every-down SEC back. The caveat is verified long speed: no reliable laser or track times surfaced in his public profile, and his ranking suggests evaluators saw a good-not-elite athletic ceiling. His 7.2 yards per carry on 274 senior carries is the strongest available evidence that he plays faster than he is rated, but it came against Georgia Class 5A competition rather than a national testing circuit.

Play Style

A physical, decisive, north-south runner who wins with contact balance, vision to the first cut, and finishing power rather than lateral electricity. On film he presses the line, takes the crease that is blocked instead of hunting the perfect one, and consistently falls forward — the profile of a back who turns two-yard runs into four and four-yard runs into eight. His 7.2 yards per carry on a heavy senior workload is the signature of a runner who breaks the first tackle rather than one who is schemed into space. He is comfortably more than a between-the-tackles battering ram: Sequoyah split him out and used him on swing and angle routes, and his 935 receiving yards over two seasons show he tracks the ball and runs after the catch with the same physicality. His tendencies skew toward patience and power over improvisation; he is unlikely to create something from nothing on a busted play, but he is also unlikely to lose yardage.

Strengths

• Bell-cow durability and volume tolerance — 274 carries as a senior and a 32-carry, 212-yard, five-touchdown game against Gainesville as a junior. He absorbed a full workload two straight years while Sequoyah made back-to-back Elite Eight runs, which is a meaningful availability and conditioning indicator for a position where attrition decides depth charts.
• Genuine three-down receiving value, not a check-down back. He posted 578 receiving yards and five touchdowns as a junior and added 26 catches for 357 yards and two scores as a senior — 935 receiving yards over two seasons is real route and hands production, and it is the single fastest path to early snaps for a freshman back in an SEC offense.
• Elite touchdown production and finishing instincts — 51 rushing touchdowns across his junior and senior seasons (21 and 30). Backs who convert at that rate inside the 10 typically have low pad level, contact balance, and the willingness to run through a defender's outside hip rather than bounce, all of which show on his junior and senior highlight reels.
• Two-year ascending arc. He was an underrecruited name entering his junior year, jumped to 1,541 rushing yards and All-State recognition, then improved again as a senior to Class 5A Player of the Year. Prospects who improve every season under increasing defensive attention tend to keep improving in a college program.

Areas to Improve

• Verified top-end speed and explosive testing. There is no publicly documented laser 40, shuttle, or track résumé, and his No. 74 positional ranking implies evaluators did not credit him with home-run speed. In the SEC, the difference between a 15-yard gain and a 60-yard touchdown is the trait he has the least third-party confirmation of — he needs to prove he can outrun angles against SEC secondaries, not just Region 5A ones.
• Pass protection is the gate on his freshman playing time. High school volume backs are rarely asked to identify and pick up an SEC blitz; nothing in his public evaluation addresses blitz recognition or the ability to anchor against a 240-pound edge or an A-gap linebacker. Until that is trustworthy, his receiving ability cannot be deployed on obvious passing downs.
• Functional mass and pad durability at 208 pounds. He added weight quickly, but carrying it through a 12-game SEC season while maintaining burst is a different demand than a 10-game Georgia high school schedule. He needs another offseason of strength work before he can handle interior SEC contact at volume.
• He was a February signee, not an early enrollee, so he missed spring practice entirely and entered fall camp behind the install. That is a real developmental deficit relative to freshmen who arrived in January, and it compounds the pass-protection learning curve.

College Projection

Redshirt candidate as a true freshman in 2026. Tennessee's backfield returns 1,000-yard rusher DeSean Bishop as the clear lead, with Tulane transfer Javin Gordon and returning sophomore Daune Morris competing for the RB2 role — that is three bodies ahead of him before camp opens, and he did not get spring reps. The realistic path is a redshirt with four games of special-teams and mop-up work in 2026, a legitimate push for the RB3 rotational spot in 2027 with Bishop's eligibility clock running down, and a chance at a genuine committee role by 2028. The accelerant would be pass protection: if he proves trustworthy on third down as a redshirt freshman, his receiving production gives him a route to snaps that pure runners on the roster do not have. He is not a prospect who needs to be schemed around, which makes him valuable roster depth from year two forward, but Tennessee did not sign him to start in 2026.

Best Fit

A downhill gap or inside-zone rushing scheme that lets him press and cut once, paired with a staff that uses backs in the passing game rather than substituting for it — essentially what Tennessee runs, which is why the fit is sensible even if the depth chart is not. He needs a program with a committee philosophy and patient development rather than one that hands the job to the highest-rated freshman on the roster; he wins jobs through accumulated reps and reliability, not camp flash. Offensively, he is best in a system with a physical offensive line that gives him defined creases, and worst in a wide-zone, speed-in-space attack that asks him to win the edge with pure acceleration. Special teams involvement is a realistic early foothold given his tackle-breaking and ball security.