Austin Howard is no stranger to change.
Vanderbilt Football’s latest commit, a 3-star linebacker recruit in the Class of 2025, has experienced a tumultuous saga of twists and turns through his young career. From a diabetes diagnosis to a series of commitment flips over the past several months, Howard has finally found a school to call home in Nashville.
Early football beginnings
Austin Howard’s football journey began when he was just six years old and living in Horn Lake, Mississippi, where he played in a youth football league. A few years later, his family moved to Bartlett, Tennessee, where he continued playing at Elmore Park Middle School. However, the moment when Howard realized how important the sport was to him didn’t come until he got to high school and played for Lance Tucker and the Bartlett Panthers.
“Coach Lance — he really, really loved me. He knew I was gonna be something special,” Howard said. “He told me that on day one.”
Entering the 2021-22 season, Tucker saw something in Howard that his previous coaches hadn’t seen. After playing both running back and middle linebacker through most of his football experience to that point, Howard was moved to outside linebacker by Tucker.
Playing a new position doesn’t always come easy, and at first, it seemed that way for Howard — he didn’t see the field in his first game. He found his stride quickly thereafter, though, and recorded his first career sack toward the end of Bartlett’s second game. Howard carved out a role for himself as the season wore on, consistently coming in on third downs to wreak havoc on opposing offenses and put pressure on the quarterback.
Then things took a turn for the worse: At the start of his sophomore year, Howard was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
“[The weight] I lost with the Type 1 diabetes — I lost 30 pounds. I was at 170 [pounds],” Howard said. “Then, after I got that situated, I [got back up to] 190 [pounds].”
Howard knew how important it was to be in the weight room, but he didn’t have the proper guidance. Through his first two years of high school football, he and his teammates started working out but lacked a solidified training regimen.
“We just went in [to the gym], put some weight on the bar, and did different stuff, but we were just good enough,” Howard said. “We were just athletic enough to go the distance.”
The team finished 10-2 in Howard’s sophomore season, coming out with a loss in the state semifinals. The end of this season was not just a major turning point for Bartlett Football, but one for Howard in particular. Tucker left to coach elsewhere and Chris Smith was named the new head coach before Howard’s junior year, which would be crucial in his recruitment process. As an outside linebacker — a highly physical position — it was important that Howard regain the muscle he had lost a year prior.
“When we got [Coach Smith] in there, he really just bulked me up completely,” Howard said. “When [the new coaching staff] came in, I got up to around 220, 222 [pounds].”
Smith had to put together almost an entirely different roster for the upcoming season. The talent was there, but something was missing; the team still could not get over the hump, getting knocked out of the playoffs in the second round.
Howard got ambitious about winning entering his senior season. He spent the summer in the weight room, putting on another 14 pounds while maintaining his speed and explosivity.
Bartlett finished the regular season 6-3, with one of those losses coming against Houston High School, the 2023 Tennessee state champions. After blowing out its first-round opponent in the playoffs, Bartlett matched up with Houston again. It was still not their time, as they were taken down 17-10 in the rematch. Although Howard never reached his ultimate goal of being a state champion, he still earned national recognition and attention from schools all over the southeast.
Finding the right fit
“[My recruitment process] really started hitting off [at the] end of my 10th grade year. [I] started getting some talks with different FCS schools,” Howard said. “I was happy, I was excited with all of that. [I] talked to Austin Peay, SEMO [and] Marshall.”
As happy as he was with this interest, Howard refused to be complacent. He lined up visits to Indiana and Tennessee in the spring of his junior year. At Indiana, he was told that he was too short to play edge rusher and never received an offer but Tennessee was a different story.
“[Tennessee was] showing a lot of love, they were showing a lot of praise, but they just weren’t offering me,” Howard said. “So I went to their junior day, I went to two of their practices, I just wasn’t getting offered, and I was wondering, ‘what’s the holdup?’”
Howard — a Tennessee native — was excited that the Volunteers were interested in him. He wasn’t so excited with the delay in their pursuit of him during the commitment process.
Enter Vanderbilt: Linebackers coach Nick Lezynski, who had been in touch with Howard for some time, called him and gave him an official offer on Feb. 6, 2024. Not long after, Howard visited Vanderbilt with his uncles.
“We loved it up there [in Nashville]. I loved everybody in the building, I was cool with everybody, and the players were cool,” Howard said. “I got to talk to Dontae Carter, [so] that was a big factor. And then I committed to Vanderbilt.”
Vanderbilt showed Howard a lot of love during the recruiting process, and he took notice.
“That’s who was showing love. You want to play somewhere where you’re being loved constantly, no matter what,” Howard said.
Howard didn’t feel the same way about Tennessee. He loved the school and the program it had built, but its communication was lackluster throughout the process. While he eventually received an offer, it wasn’t until April 8, three days after he had already committed to play for the Black and Gold.
Time passed, official visits happened, and all seemed well, but Howard kept his options open. His recruitment heated up as he received offers from Ole Miss and Mississippi State and made visits to both soon after.
Howard flipped his commitment just two days after his official visit to Mississippi State. Despite this change, Vanderbilt continued to show unwavering support.
“They never switched up on how they felt towards me the entire time. It was just straight love,” Howard said.
To Howard, committing to a school was never a permanent outcome; it was more indicative of his priority at the time while staying open-minded and not limiting himself. After attending multiple games at both Vanderbilt and Mississippi State throughout the 2024 football season, he felt something in Nashville that he didn’t feel in Starkville.
“I can talk to [head] coach [Clark] Lea. I can call anybody right now and they’ll pick up the phone,” Howard said. “It was just that love, and we didn’t even have to talk about football. We could be talking about random stuff.”
It wasn’t just that Howard liked talking to Vanderbilt’s coaches — he felt valued by them.
Having Lea as the team’s head coach and defensive coordinator — and him being a former linebackers coach — was important to Howard. So, for a second time in less than a year, on Nov. 16, he committed to be a Commodore. With Lea and Lezynski coaching him and focusing on him at practice, he feels that he’ll be able to become the best player he can be and a potential cornerstone to Vanderbilt’s defense for years to come.
“Vanderbilt showed me who they like. I was their guy, and that’s what it feels like. I’m going to be the guy, I’m going to come in and be a leader. Instantly, it just felt like a better fit,” Howard said. “If I went to Mississippi State, I just felt like I was gonna be another part, another piece of the team.”
Never settle for less
Howard’s happy to be where he is, but he’s not done yet.
“What do I want to be? Obviously, [most players] want to be [All] Freshman Team, All-American, All-SEC. I just want what’s best for the team. I’ve seen a lot of winning. No matter what sport you’re playing, it always boils down to the same thing: everybody [needs to be] dedicated to winning,” Howard said. “[The real question is] are you going to get tired? Are you going to get tired of winning?”
It’s rare to see this type of maturity in an athlete who has yet to graduate from high school. Howard, a multi-sport athlete, has been on basketball teams that were ranked top 25 in the nation. He’s broken school records for his track team in the 4×100-meter relay. And, of course, he’s been on football teams that have made deep runs in the Tennessee state playoffs.
But he hasn’t gotten to a point of complacency with winning.
“[Our football team] kept winning [and] it just got to a point where everybody got relaxed,” Howard said. “You have to have the whole team with the same mindset going forward and just trying to get better every single day. You can’t get comfortable with wherever you’re at. So my biggest thing is just getting the team to understand that [you’ve] got to keep going, keep striving to get better.”
Howard has high expectations for his first year at Vanderbilt. He believes that the team can build off the success of this year, despite being plagued with injuries and playing one of the hardest strengths of schedule in the nation. With his elite combination of quickness, strength, intelligence and work ethic, Howard can become a game-wrecker in every sense of the word. Fans will anticipate his arrival in Nashville next fall, along with the remainder of Vanderbilt’s 2025 commitment class.
Howard will be present at FirstBank Stadium on Nov. 30 to watch the Vanderbilt Commodores take on the Tennessee Volunteers at 11 a.m. CST.
