“With a lot a lot of prayer and conversations with my family and those closest to me, I’ve decided to declare for the NFL draft,” Carter announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Friday, Steve Wiltfong of On3 provided an update on the former Vol.<\/p>\n “Tennessee linebacker Arion Carter plans to withdraw from the NFL draft and enter the NCAA transfer portal, Steve Wiltfong reports,” On3 announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n The 6-foot-1, 235-pound linebacker appeared in 31 games for the Vols from 2023-25. He totaled 161 tackles, 13.5 tackles for a loss, 1.5 sacks, one interception, 10 pass deflections, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.<\/p>\n Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n The\u00a0NFL draft<\/a>\u00a0will be held April 23\u201325, 2026 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n More: 2026 Tennessee football transfer portal tracker<\/a> Follow Vols Wire on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0X<\/a>\u00a0(formerly Twitter).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 16, 2026, 7:26 p.m. ET Tennessee junior linebacker Arion Carter announced his intentions to declare for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[95878,7,6,15,97322,96358,95882,96027,95893,95896,95888,95899,96099,96100,96071,95883,97081,95894,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-683158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-draft","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-nfl-draft","12":"tag-sstssportscollegevolunteersfootball","13":"tag-sstsnfootball","14":"tag-tagamerican-football","15":"tag-tagcollege-sports","16":"tag-tagfacebook","17":"tag-tagnational-sports","18":"tag-tagnfl","19":"tag-tagoverall-neutral","20":"tag-tagsec-conference-football","21":"tag-tagsec-hub","22":"tag-tagsmg-timely","23":"tag-tagsports-news","24":"tag-tagtennessee-volunteers-football","25":"tag-tagtwitter","26":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115907997543504744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/83636073007-usatsi-7573664.jpg\")