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Tennessee football: 5 strengths with Vols revamped staff heading into 2019

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 29: A general view of Neyland Stadium during the South Carolina Gamecocks game against the Tennessee Volunteers on October 29, 2011 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - OCTOBER 29: A general view of Neyland Stadium during the South Carolina Gamecocks game against the Tennessee Volunteers on October 29, 2011 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images) /
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Tee Martin
Photo by Elsa Hasch /Allsport /

Tennessee football assistants bring a lot to the table for Jeremy Pruitt. Here are five major strengths for the Volunteers revamped staff heading into 2019.

In the offseason, Jeremy Pruitt replaced his offensive coordinator and brought in a new defensive coordinator. Tennessee football has three new coaches overall, and five new positions have changed coaches.

Simply put, the Vols have totally changed up their staff. Even the special teams coordinator is different, although he is a returning coach from last year’s team, Kevin Sherrer. Jim Chaney is the new offensive coordinator and Derrick Ansley is the new defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach.

Meanwhile, Tee Martin is the new position coach, coming into lead the wide receivers. Chris Weinke moved over to quarterbacks coach, and David Johnson moved over to running backs coach.  Charles Kelly, Tyson Helton and Terry Fair are all gone. As a result, Tennessee football made a splash in the offseason with the way it changed things up.

But is this all good news or bad news? After all, change for change’s sake isn’t always great. Sure, the Vols had a historically bad offense last year, but that doesn’t all fall on the staff members who were there. And the defense was serviceable.

So how effective will these staff changes be? Well, we won’t fully know until the season begins. But we can start projecting by looking at the track record of everybody that’s working with Pruitt now, including Pruitt himself.

The combination of Pruitt and those 10 assistants has a lot of different but valuable experience for Rocky Top. In this post, we’re going to look at what they all bring to the table. Our focus won’t just be the new guys either. The returning guys coaching new positions have track records there, so we’ll also take a look at those factors.

Will this all work out when Fall arrives? Are there going to be any issues with the changes? Maybe, but it could all be worth it. Find out why in this post. While only focusing on on-field coaches, these are the five things Tennessee football’s revamped staff brings to the table.

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