UTC safety Clay Fields III ready to step into starting role

Clay Fields III already had both a college degree and a college football resumé when he enrolled at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in January.

The 5-foot-10, 211-pound safety came from New York’s Marist College, where as a two-year starter for the Red Foxes he was a two-time All-Pioneer League first-team selection. In 2021, he was an Associated Press Football Championship Subdivision All-America third-team pick. And entering this season, he made the watch list for the prestigious Senior Bowl for NFL prospects.

The Pioneer League is widely viewed as the worst league in the FCS, though, so as Fields prepared to transfer, he was looking for a place where he could use his final college season to prove he was what his resumé suggested he was: a really good football player.

So he chose Chattanooga. He chose the Southern Conference, where he could compete week in and week out against a higher level of competition. And while Fields didn’t appear in the Mocs’ first two games this season, he has been in action the past four Saturdays — and the way he has played suggests he is figuring things out.

Fellow UTC defensive back Romeo Wykle, a former prep star at nearby Cleveland, joined the Mocs as a transfer in 2020 from Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College, another Patriot League program. That gave Wykle a helpful perspective on Fields’ situation.

“He was a little frustrated at the beginning of the season, and I just told him that it was a little bit of an adjustment,” Wykle said. “I know what type of ball was played (in the Patriot League). Not saying it’s bad ball at all, but there’s very good athletes in the SoCon, so it’s a little bit of an adjustment period, but you once you get adjusted to it, learning the defense, learning how everybody else is going to be, he’ll be fine.”

Fields has done that, coming off the bench to compile 15 total tackles for the Mocs (4-2, 2-1 SoCon), who remained nationally ranked this week after last Saturday’s 52-50 home loss to Western Carolina. UTC is tied for 20th in the coaches poll and is 25th in the media poll as it prepares to face Mercer (4-2, 3-1), which received votes in both polls.

Kickoff is set for 4 p.m. Saturday at Five Star Stadium in Macon, Georgia, and Fields is set to make his first start for UTC.

“It feels good because all the hard work that I’ve put in, whether going to extra film, get extra work in on the field, an extra run and different things like that, now it’s all coming to light and showing in the games that I’m playing a lot better than some people even expected me to,” Fields said.

“Where I was coming from, when you look at the rankings of the different conferences in the FCS, the Pioneer is kind of in the lower tier, and when you look at the SoCon, it’s definitely one of the best in the country, so some people take it for granted that I was ranked so high with my resumé, and now coming in and it’s actually translating, it looks exactly the same as me playing in the Pioneer League. So yeah, a lot of people were kind of surprised.”

Getting into the starting lineup was difficult for Fields in a UTC secondary that returned safeties Josh Battle and Jordan Walker, but the graduate transfer has played well, including a season-high five tackles with a pass breakup last week against Western Carolina, which totaled 551 offensive yards (276 passing, 275 rushing) against the Mocs. After practice on Tuesday, defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward confirmed the change in the secondary, along with Reuben Lowery going back to nickel from corner.

“He had to get comfortable,” head coach Rusty Wright said of Fields. “I think when he got here, he was a little bit out of shape and it took him a while to get back into it. Second, I don’t think he realized we’ve got good players, we’ve got guys that can go, even in his spot. Third was understanding everything, and that was the biggest thing was being in the right spots, understanding what we’re trying to get done and do that.

“To his credit, he kept working, and he’s kept working and kept working and never said a whole lot, just put his nose down and just keeps grinding, trying to get better. He’s doing well in school. He’s a good young man to be around, and I told him, ‘You don’t know when that time for you is going to come, but you better be ready when it comes and make the best of it.'”

Fields, whose degree was in communications, turned 23 in February, so he has been around college football for a while. He redshirted in 2018, appeared in every game Marist played in 2019 (with one start), dealt with the difficulty of the coronavirus pandemic — the Red Foxes did not play in the 2020 season — then took on the bigger role the past two years.

Now he is getting a similar opportunity with the Mocs, thanks to a little time to figure out his new surroundings.

“It was a little difficult at first, just getting used to the play style of the SoCon,” Fields said. “Coming from the Pioneer League, the skill level is a lot lower, so the concepts are a little more simple, and coming to a better competition level with more complex games and different things like that, it took me a little bit to get used to, but now I’m used to understanding what people like to do and different styles that we go against.”

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.