After a season marked by inconsistency and underwhelming results against quality opponents, the University of Tennessee football program is undergoing wholesale changes on the defensive coaching staff and through the transfer portal.
The Vols (8-5, 4-4 SEC) finished the season with back-to-back losses, falling to Vanderbilt in the regular season finale and to Illinois in the Music City Bowl. Between the setbacks, head coach Josh Heupel began the dismantling of the defensive staff by firing defensive coordinator Tim Banks and hiring Jim Knowles to take his place.
In the aftermath of last week’s 30-28 loss to Illinois in the Music City Bowl, Knowles, who spent last season at Penn State and previously led the Ohio State and Oklahoma State defenses, started to fill out his defensive staff.
UT let go of secondary coach Willie Martinez and hired Penn State’s Anthony Poindexter as co-defensive coordinator/secondary coach and Ohio State’s Michael Hunter as cornerbacks coach. Poindexter had been the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach at Penn State while Hunter coached defensive backs under Knowles at Oklahoma State and Ohio State.
Knowles also hired Penn State’s Andrew Jackson as the LEOs coach. Jackson was the defensive line coach at West Virginia before moving to Penn State last season in the same role under Knowles.
Defensive line coach Rodney Garner and linebackers coach William Inge will remain as holdovers on the UT staff.
“This group has a long, distinguished track record of outstanding recruiting, player development and coaching technique in either the Big Ten or SEC,” Heupel says. “They are already in our facility and working hard with Coach Knowles to help restore the standard of defense we expect to play at Tennessee.”
Heupel made another significant change to his staff by not retaining UT strength coach Kurt Schmidt, who had worked with Heupel for the past nine years at three different schools. The strength coach is one of the most important roles on a college football staff because of how much time the strength coach spends with the players in the offseason and how important the job is for developing players physically and keeping them healthy.
Portal a two-week sprint
The new coaches had to jump right into the fire with the transfer portal opening Jan. 2 and staying open through Jan. 16. The Vols will have some significant holes to fill on the team, most pressingly in the secondary and finding a veteran quarterback to compete for the starting job with Joey Aguilar having likely played his last college game, pending a lawsuit outcome that could grant him another year of eligibility.
As has become common in college football since the portal began allowing players to transfer each season without penalty, the Vols had several players announce they were entering, including cornerback Rickey Gibson III, offensive lineman Lance Heard, defensive lineman Caleb Herring and kicker Max Gilbert.
Heupel is hoping to find the right transfers that will fit his system and the UT culture overall while still focusing on the players already in the program. Kansas State safety Qua Moss was the first transfer this year to commit to the Vols.
“We’ve got to get better, absolutely, but there’s a lot of really good young talent inside of that locker room, one of if not the youngest teams in our league,” Heupel said after the Music City Bowl loss. “There’s an influx of guys that we just signed that are highly talented. Yes, we have to go into the portal and get some guys, too. The talent is one thing. The development of it is the second part of it.”
Must show improvement
Change has become a constant in the modern era of college football, and it happens at a more rapid pace than ever before. The entire outlook of a program can change in just a few months, for good or ill. Patience is not as plentiful with the financial component of NIL and coaching salaries escalating.
Although UT football has been in much worse shape before, Heupel knows another season like 2025 won’t be tolerated at a university with high expectations and the resources to be a national contender on an annual basis.
He challenged the current players to use the season-ending losses as motivation to get better and stronger in the offseason. Who will be a part of that process will be determined over the next few weeks as players and coaches either stay, arrive or depart from Rocky Top.
“Feel really good about what we have coming back, what we have coming in, and then we’ve got to go get some guys here in the portal,” Heupel says. “Then, we’ve got to build a football team, which is what you have to do every year when you get back in January.”