The Indiana Hoosiers added to their portal class for 2025 on Thursday afternoon as they added former Notre Dame and Tennessee tight end Holden Staes. The 6’4”, 248-pound senior will have one year left to play for the Hoosiers and was tabbed the number one portal tight end when he transferred in 2023.
Tennessee tight ends coach Alec Albin had this to say about staes as the 2024 season came to a close.
“I think he’s grown so much from what spring, early looked like. He’d be the first to tell you, just his improvement, little by little throughout the course of the year, and you look up and it’s like man, he’s a really, really good football player for us. There’s tons of stuff to clean up, just like all of them. But really proud of just, man a guy that came here because he wanted to be developed and has taken steps every single day to get better.”
When Staes arrived at Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said, “Holden has the physical attributes. You can see in his footage already that he has the ability to play out in space and connect it in the line of scrimmage. He has the body type and frame to do everything that we’re going to ask him to do inside of this league and our offense. He’s bright and competitive. He has the makeup to help us immediately.”
Staes got the reputation at Tennessee as a better blocker than a pass catcher, but he has the ability to become a weapon in the passing game for IU.