UNC Football: Two big Tar Heels’ targets climb into Top 10

The state of North Carolina has two players in the updated Top 10 recruiting rankings released by ESPN and that’s good news for the UNC Football program

While Mack Brown and his staff at North Carolina have put together two impressive recruiting classes for 2019 and 2020, the focus is always on the future and the recruiting work never stops.

Coming off that 7-6 season in 2019, Brown and the Tar Heels welcomed in a Top 20 recruiting class for 2020. That included landing the best player in the state in five-star defensive end Desmond Evans.

One emphasis the Tar Heels have put on their recruiting since Brown has returned is landing in-state recruits. So far, they have done a great job of that and for the 2021 class, all six commits are from the state of North Carolina.

The Tar Heels still have a lot of targets left on their 2021 recruiting board and will add to it before the recruiting period is over in a year from now. Among those targets left are some big in-state recruits such as defensive tackle Payton Page and defensive end Keeshawn Silver, both of who just moved up in the recruiting rankings.

Earlier this week ESPN released their updated rankings for recruits in the 2021 recruiting class as a bunch of players saw significant movement. Among them? Silver and Page who moved into the Top 10 and earned five-star status.

The 6-foot-3, 290-pound Page moved up to No. 9 overall in the rankings, the highest-ranked player in the state. He has a total of 33 offers in his recruitment and recently cut his list down to North Carolina, Clemson, LSU, Oregon and Tennessee.

Silver is a 6-foot-5, 236-pound defensive end and is ranked No. 10 overall with a five-star status in his recruitment.  Silver has a total of 32 offers but has not trimmed his list much. Among the 32 teams are the Tar Heels and they currently have 100 percent of the Crystal Ball predictors on 247 Sports.

Only North Carolina and Florida are states with two players ranked in the Top 10.

The Tar Heels are in good shape with both players and landing them would certainly bump UNC’s class up even more as it’s currently a Top 20 class. With a long way to go in the recruiting cycle, we will keep an eye on both recruitments.

For more on UNC Football recruiting, please check back with Keeping It Heel.