In a loss to Bobby Petrino’s Louisville Cardinals in the Music City Bowl, the Texas A&M Aggies’ defense showed why Tennessee fans don’t miss John Chavis.
It was third and two, and the Louisville Cardinals needed only one first down to close out the game with a 27-21 victory. Texas A&M’s defense knew they would have to get a stop to get the ball back.
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But with John Chavis as defensive coordinator, what happened next was beyond predictable to LSU Tigers and Tennessee Vols fans.
Lamar Jackson took the snap and ran four yards for the first. Ballgame.
Vintage Third and Chavis.
But that wasn’t all. In Bobby Petrino’s advanced offensive system, his mobile quarterback ran and threw for more than 200 yards each against Kevin Sumlin’s team. They gained more than 500 yards of total offense.
That was also vintage Chavis.
With more than 20 years of experience now as a defensive coordinator, the book on Chavis is out.
He is a brilliant defensive coordinator…if he’s going up against a pro-style offense he’s seen before.
Chavis is great at developing players mentally and physically, he can teach fundamentals on defense better than anybody, and playing for him will prepare you for the NFL.
Meanwhile, he can prepare better than anybody for standard offenses.
But against brilliant offensive coordinators, complex offenses, or an offense that does not do exactly what it did on film, he is useless, and he always has been.
Chavis got caught with that again in the Music City Bowl. He was facing an offensive genius who knew how to utilize a dual-threat quarterback: not your typical pro-style offense.
As a result, his defense looked like the old Texas A&M defenses before he got there. He could not handle one minor wrench in an offense and got torched in doing so.
It should be noted that this is a trend for Chavis, and Vol fans know about it all too well.
When he first became defensive coordinator of the Vols in 1995, his defenses got torched for three straight years against Steve Spurrier’s Fun-n-Gun offense despite having far more NFL talent.
It was not until 1998 that he finally figured out how to play it, which made the next four games close.
He also had trouble with the Triple Option during that time. Despite a front seven loaded with NFL talent, the Nebraska Cornhuskers torched his defenses in two bowl games, one for the national championship, and then the Kansas State Wildcats did the same thing in another bowl game.
Then came the mid-2000s, and Chavis never figured out the spread offense. Tim Tebow destroyed the Vols twice, and then he went to LSU and lost again to Tebow.
But Chavis’s greatest failure came in the 2001 SEC Championship, and it highlighted his lack of skills at in-game adjustments. His Vols had prepared for quarterback Rohan Davey and his pro-style offense, and it worked to perfection.
Davey did not lead the Tigers on one scoring drive that game. But he got hurt. And in came freshman Matt Mauck, a run-first quarterback.
Nick Saban changed the whole offense to work around him. Chavis never adjusted. Despite the greatest defensive tackle tandem in college football history, Mauck ran and threw all over the field, leading the Tigers to 31 points in their victory. Chavis was beaten by a freshman quarterback, all because he had not prepared for him.
Don’t get me wrong. There are still great things about Chavis, and he certainly showed that with his 1998 national championship. Overall, he was a great fit for Kevin Sumlin’s Aggies because they only need the defense to be competent going into the future.
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But he is terrible at in-game adjustments. And his obsession with speed and bringing pressure all the time consistently gets him beat against misdirection offenses.
It showed again in the Music City Bowl, and that is why Vols fans should not miss him.