Tennessee defensive end becomes UVA’s newest commitment

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Virginia’s new defensive line coach Clint Sintim knows talent when he sees it, and that was the case with the Cavaliers’ newest football commitment.

Michael Diatta, a 6-foot-5, 265-pound defensive lineman from Cane Ridge High School in Antioch, Tenn. (a Nashville suburb), became UVA’s 22nd commitment this week, but the Cavaliers have had eyes on him since before the pandemic.

While most of Diatta’s 12 offers from from FCS schools over the summer and fall, once Virginia became the first Power Five member to make an offer, others quickly followed. UVA had hoped to get Diatta into its camp over the summer, but the pandemic ended that idea. Bronco Mendenhall wanted to see game film of the two-way lineman, but the state of Tennessee’s football season didn’t begin until late September.

Once Virginia saw some game film to helps its analysis, the Cavaliers offered.

“It meant a lot because they were the first Power Five school to reach out to me,” Diatta told Josh Helmholdt, Rivals.com’s national recruiting analyst. “I’d been worried for the longest time, am I ever going to get a Power Five school? Would I ever get the opportunity to play at the Power Five level? No that it finally came, it’s a big relief.”

Within the last week, the 3-star gained offers from Memphis, Tulane, Vanderbilt and Georgia Southern. He also had previous offers from Coastal Carolina, Holy Cross, Eastern Kentucky, Columbia, Brown, Western Carolina, Holy Cross, and UT Martin.

Obviously, Sintim was pretty much sold on Diatta from the get-go, but just needed some updated video to confirm his opinion and to convince Mendenhall. The Wahoos intentions are to place Diatta at defensive end, where he can use his length.

While Diatta had played mostly offensive line prior to and starting his senior year, he has been playing some on the defensive side of the ball where he has posted three sacks in recent games.