He’s the nation’s No. 2 edge rusher, and Myers Park’s Rodney Dunham is ready to commit
About a week ago, Myers Park High School’s Rodney Dunham finally decided where he wanted to play football in college.
Dunham is a 6-foot-4, 227-pound junior that 247 Sports ranks as the No. 2 recruit in North Carolina, the No. 2 recruit nationally as an edge rusher and the No. 14 recruit overall in his class.
So far, Dunham says he’s only told his parents where he plans to play. Not even his high school coach, Chris James, is in on the secret. But at 4 p.m. Thursday Dunham will announce his choice publicly in a ceremony in the school’s gym.
His finalists? He gave this order when asked last week: Georgia, South Carolina, Notre Dame, Tennessee and Duke.
“I think I’m ready to get this over with,” Dunham said, “but it’s been fun.”
It’s also been a bit of a whirlwind.
Dunham was vaulted onto the national stage in a hurry last summer, shortly after South Carolina offered. He had a couple offers at the time, from East Carolina and Charlotte, but when the Power 4 Gamecocks dropped an offer, the recruiting game escalated.
Dunham quickly went from a no-star to a five-star, the highest rating a prep prospect can receive.
“I would get a few offers and I would look up my name and see if I was getting ranked,” Dunham said. “Then I saw it, from 247 (after the South Carolina offer), and I was like, ‘Wow.’ The next day, Rivals called me and said, ‘You’re going to be ranked,’ and it just went up from there.”
What led to all of that? Dunham had made a huge jump from his freshman year to his sophomore year, his coach, James, said.
Dunham had prototypical size and length, plus that rare speed and burst coaches are looking for in guys who line up with one mission: Get to the quarterback.
“I mean he’s 225, 230 right now,” James said, “and I see him being 245 to 250. He’s extremely athletic, more than people know. And with him having a baseball background — he’s played pitcher and outfielder — he can move. He has a motor and he’s still learning the game. That’s the scariest part. When you watch sophomore to junior tape, you saw a big leap. I think those schools saw it, too.”
As a sophomore, Dunham totaled 55 tackles, seven sacks, 20 QB pressures and 16 tackles for a loss. He saw a lot of double-teams as a junior and teams running plays away from him a lot. He still finished with 39 tackles, five sacks and 16 QB hits.
He turned down a high school NIL offer with an apparel company because it didn’t feel like the right fit, but said he’s been wowed by the NIL money he’s going to start getting when he enrolls in college in December.
“I will say it does change your life pretty well,” said Dunham, whose brother, Emiere Scaife, played quarterback at Mallard Creek High and Georgia State. “I’ll say this, it’s a lot. The first time I heard the number, I was like, ‘I wasn’t expecting all this.’”
If Dunham doesn’t quite sound like your typical five-star recruit, used to first-class plane rides plus free camps and gear, well, it’s because he’s not.
Some of it is how fast he went from “unknown” to “known,” and some of it is just him.
“I think Rodney’s a really special kid because of who he is as a person,” retiring Myers Park girls’ basketball coach Barbara Nelson said. “He’s a man-child. He’s got the body and competitiveness of a man but he he has the heart of a child. He has fun in the weight room and his playlist is music I would listen to. He’s always got a smile on his face. I find how he is as a person and a human is just refreshing. He’s so nice, so kind.”
But Dunham — who has a 4.2 GPA student at one of North Carolina’s most challenging academic public schools — flips his personality on the field, James said.
“He’s a quiet, corny, funny type of kid you want to be around,” James said. “But he can be a beast on the field. That switch will flip. But because of his personality, he has not let this recruiting deal get to him, which is why he’s been able to handle it stress free. All that flashy stuff that some kids like and is part of recruiting now is just not him.”
Dunham’s parents have shared a couple PSL seats at Bank of America Stadium for years and Dunham has been to his share of Panthers games in uptown Charlotte.
And he understands, being ranked where he is, with potential like he has — 247 Sports director of recruiting Andrew Ivins said Dunham “has a chance to emerge as a true difference-maker on Saturdays” — that he could one day play himself into the NFL Draft.
So does his coach.
“Once he gets it, and the game slows down for him, the kid definitely has a future in terms of playing on Sundays,” James said. “It’s just a matter of how well he can develop at whatever school he goes to and from there, it’s about production. Honestly, he’s not (former Myers Park QB) Drake (Maye, who became a top 10 NFL draft pick out of North Carolina), but I’m not going to see another Rodney Dunham come through my school again. I’m just not.”
Dunham said he’s working his hardest to stay grounded, to keep doing the things that got him in this position to start with.
“Yeah, I think about (the NFL) sometimes,” he said. “But I don’t try to think too far ahead. It’s about what’s in front of you, and you have to attack that first. I still have my senior year (of high school) and then I’ll have my freshman season at whatever (college) I choose. The NFL is achievable, but it’s not my time yet.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
