Following Saturday’s first scrimmage of preseason camp, Josh Heupel may have given hope for the die-hard fan who may have been listening closely enough to get it.
Hidden among the cliches Heupel used to set a smoke screen for anyone trying to figure out what Tennessee’s quarterback situation is going to look like, was an evaluation of what might be happening on the defensive side of the ball.
There’s tackling. Lots of tackling. Physical contact. Pads are popping (oops, sorry, stumbled into the cliches).
Anyway, according to the guy in charge, physicality has found a place on the defense. New coordinator Jim Knowles has brought a different perspective from Penn State.
“We’ve done a bunch of tackling during our practices,” Heupel said. “We’ve got to refine those skills (with) our eyes, our pad level.
“Through training camp, I think it’s been real physical.”
One of the knocks on previous coordinator Tim Banks was that physicality might have been lacking during practices.
Of course, it’s easy to point fingers when the defense last year was the primary culprit that led to an 8-5 season and ultimately Banks’ firing. Nobody was calling him out two years ago when it was the defense that made up for a lot of the inconsistencies of the offense under quarterback Nico Iamaleava. That defense in 2024 took the Vols to the first 12-team College Football Playoff before being chewed up by eventual champion Ohio State — which had Jim Knowles as its defensive coordinator.
Talent can go a long way toward making a defense look good. With guys like edge James Pearce, linebacker Arion Carter, corner Jermod MdCoy and another edge Joshua Josephs, the Vols were dominant. Tennessee yielded just 11.6 points a game that season.
Nobody called those Vols soft or complained that they weren’t physical enough in practice.
More than the actual practice plan and bodies banging together, that defense carried an attitude throughout the season. Talented players with a nasty attitude and a will to make something positive happen no matter the situation can carry a team a long way.
Beyond incorporating the intangibles into what he has been teaching his unit, Knowles has had to think out of the box a bit to create a pass rush.
When Chaz Coleman, the big-money piece of the puzzle, bailed out, that left a gaping hole on the depth chart. Finding someone to fill that gap doesn’t just happen.
Several of the Vols’ defensive linemen have re-structured their bodies in the offseason, dropping some weight and focusing on speed. Seeing how that translates into the performance on the field will be interesting.
Finding the balance of attitude and physicality will be imperative.