At the time of this article, Dallan Hayden, out of Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, TN, is the #300 overall prospect and #18 athlete in the 2022 class, according to 247sports. We usually don’t cover players in the middle of their high school junior season, but I’m making an exception. I’ve been fortunate enough to watch Hayden since he was a freshman, and while I try to stay unbiased, I think we’ll hear his name a lot this time next year.
Hayden started at cornerback as a freshman. He played both ways, corner and running back, as a sophomore. This season, as a junior, he’s only playing running back. Between you and me, he’s much better on offense than defense, which makes sense, because running back is in his blood. He’s the son of former Tennessee Vol and NFL running back Aaron Hayden. His brother, Chase Hayden, played running back for a few seasons at Arkansas before deciding to finish up his college career at East Carolina this season.
Hayden had an offer from Tennessee to play defensive back before he ever played a varsity snap. Since then, he’s received 24 other offers, with two of his most recent coming from Notre Dame and Ohio State. The Vols are among the teams who want to wait to decide where to play him. Notre Dame and Ohio State are recruiting him as a running back. According to folks around the program, things changed for him, his recruitment, and the team when he heard from those schools about playing running back.
After adding 15 pounds in the offseason, Hayden is up to 5’11” and 195 right now. He looks better. He got faster and more explosive with the weight gain. He’s obviously stronger and more powerful, and you can tell these changes helped his confidence. He exhibited a physical play style as a freshman cornerback, but he ran the ball timidly at times as a sophomore. That’s gone now. He’s not afraid to lower his shoulder to gain the hard yard. He’s comfortable dragging defenders for as long as they want to hold on. Overall, he started running with a finisher’s mentality. 195 pounds may be his sweet spot, but the coaching staff thinks he can get to 210 pounds before sacrificing any of his newfound athleticism.
Something that might go unnoticed, but I look for on every sideline run:
Hayden benefits from a great run-blocking offensive line and a head coach who employs a smashmouth style of offense. With each game that passes, the number of defenders he has to face in the box grows. His team doesn’t have a passing attack to keep defenses from crowding the line. It’s not in the offense to utilize him as a receiving option, so it’s unknown what his hands are like. It’s unclear how fast he is, even though he’s fast enough to erase angles and run away from most high school defenders. The only track times I could find were from his freshman year in 2018. He recorded a 12.42 100-meters and a 24.91 200-meters.
Recently named the mid-season MVP in the Commercial Appeal’s High School Football Midseason Report, Hayden is the first player in Shelby County to 1,000 rushing yards in 2020. I can’t find current stats for the state of Tennessee, but it would be hard to find someone who has more than 1,182 yards and 15 TDs in five games. In those five games, he’s accounted for three of the top four single-game rushing totals in school history.
Hayden is making the most of the great start to his season. He’s working with Touchdowns to Tackle Illiteracy this season. Before the season, Hayden asked for pledges and donations, and every touchdown he scores supports the work that Coaching for Literacy is doing in the community. He’s currently at $1,035 per touchdown. Times 15 equals $15,518 raised so far.
