Greensboro (N.C.) Dudley five-star defensive tackle Payton Page, one of the top prospects in the 2021 class, took to Twitter last week with an update on his decision timing:
Committing before my senior year…. I hope🤞🏽
— Payton Page (@PaytonPage55) March 26, 2020
The Clemson Insider recently caught up with Page, a priority target for the Tigers, to get the latest on where things stand in his recruitment.
Page (6-4, 315) wants to take more visits before he pulls the trigger on his commitment, though squeezing them all in before his senior year could prove to be difficult depending on how long the NCAA’s dead period lasts.
Right now, all on- and off-campus recruiting is suspended until at least April 15 due to the coronavirus, and it remains to be seen when the NCAA will allow recruits to start visiting college campuses again.
“If this quarantine keeps happening, it will affect a lot because I won’t be able to visit these schools that I really want to visit,” Page said. “Like my top five, I really want to visit my top five.”
Clemson, LSU, North Carolina, Oregon and Tennessee comprise Page’s top five, and he says all those schools are still recruiting him hard along with several others.
“Ohio State, Georgia, Auburn, Miami, South Carolina and Southern California,” he listed.
Tennessee is the school that last hosted Page, having attracted him to its campus in early March prior to the NCAA making the decision to shut down in-person recruiting.
“It was actually pretty good,” Page said of the visit. “I got to know the D-line coach (Jimmy Brumbaugh) pretty well.”
Page most recently visited Clemson for the program’s elite junior day in late January after attending a couple of games at Death Valley in the fall and continues to stay in touch with the coaching staff.
The Tigers have tried to put any concerns he might have about early playing time (in a talented D-line corps at Clemson) to rest.
“Basically they’ve been telling me a lot of people’s going to get in my head about playing time and Clemson,” Page said. “They said if I do go there, there’s only one person that’s going to look like me, and that’s me.”
Page is ranked as the No. 28 overall prospect in the 2021 class by the 247Sports Composite, which considers him the No. 2 prospect in North Carolina and No. 4 defensive tackle nationally.
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