How did UNC end up landing Trashawn Ruffin?
Don Callahan: "Things didn't really pick up with him until the new staff, the Bill Belichick staff, came into office and really starting to establish a really strong relationship with him. Specifically, Michael Lombardi was talking to him every day. And it has been on this path to commitment switch for a couple months now. When he visited Chapel Hill for the the big junior day that included the UNC-Duke basketball game a couple weekends back, that was probably the final straw that pushed it into this direction. And after mulling the decision for a week, thinking about it, praying about it, talking to family members about it, he actually returned to Chapel Hill on Monday to make the commitment flip in person with the coaching staff."
Coming from such a small school, what about his ability has major college football so interested in him?
Callahan: "He's close to 330 now, so 6-3, 330 — a big kid and he moves really well. This is a kid who has NFL tools, which is why a lot of the SEC schools were recruiting him very heavily. Schools like Texas A&M and Georgia and those sort of programs that just love those big bodies that move really well, and care less about how good of a high school player they are at the moment. I'm not saying that Ruffin isn't a very good high school player, because he is, but they're more focused on the multiple tools — the size, the mobility — and that's exactly what he has.
"You bring in Bill Belichick, who, as he and Lombardi have preached over and over again about 'the 33rd NFL team.' So this is a kid who fits exactly into that developmental (focus). Typically, what happens when you go to a small school, you can't just focus in on one position. You have to play a lot of different roles, especially if you're a massive kid. You're doing a lot of different things, have a lot of different focuses, and that slows you down from a production standpoint, while being this great high school player. But that doesn't matter to the staff. They just love the fact that he has all the measurables that you ask for in a big defensive tackle.
Why did he get such strong national interest, including SEC schools, but the local school wasn’t more of a factor initially?
Callahan: "I'm just going to give you a quote that he gave me when I went on location and visited him and his coaches at his high school. I guess it was a couple months ago. And so this is a quote from Ruffin and he's talking about North Carolina's camp. 'At the camp, they really did love me, but my grades weren't up to par, so they had to clear me in order to offer me. And one day they called me up, and they were just like, man, we're going to offer you. They've been waiting for a long time for that.' So he had some academic stuff they had to work out, and he was on track to working those things out.
"Some schools, I don't want to say they don't care about that stuff, but they will recruit you, and if you don't qualify, they'll place you at a JuCo school, maybe a post grad, which is not as common anymore for North Carolina, at least at that point. Academic requirements for admission for UNC are a little bit harder, so they had to be a little bit more careful, and didn't want to pursue a kid that they didn't think was going to be able to make it into Chapel Hill. That was back in September, October, an entire semester has finished. I don't know specifics with his academics, but, if he had a really good fall semester, and his progress reports for the spring semester look really good, that makes a whole different academic situation for this kid."
With DTs David Jackson and now Trashawn Ruffin committed, where does UNC stand in 2026 with defensive line recruiting?
Callahan: "It's difficult (to fully gauge) because they are definitely pushing for the 105 (scholarship limit), so numbers change dramatically, and it gives you a lot more freedom. You're not sticking so much to your position objectives, numbers-wise, and you're more focused on just getting guys and seeing where they fall, position-wise. So they're going to continue to recruit defensive linemen. Both of the guys that you mentioned, Jackson and Ruffin, are interior guys. So some edge rushers and strong side defensive end-types are going to be needed. But D-tackles, big bodies that move really well, don't grow on trees. And so to get a couple of them early on is a really good sign."