Tennessee football: 5 assistant hires that got a Vols head coach fired
Some Tennessee football head coaches have had their careers messed up by bad assistant hires. Here are five times that happened to Volunteers leaders.
Heading into his second year as head coach of the Tennessee football program, Jeremy Pruitt has taken a couple of bold steps. One of them was choosing to replace himself as defensive coordinator and bring a new guy in, Derrick Ansley.
He also had to replace Tyson Helton as offensive coordinator, and to do that he brought in Jim Chaney from the Georgia Bulldogs. These hires could make or break Pruitt in the long run, as they have done with Vols coaches in years past.
Despite what Nick Saban has been doing in recent seasons, most head coaches see their best success based on the staff they hire. Saban is actually just such a great scout for talented coaches that he continues to replace people and put them in the right positions.
It’s a skill that very few people have. And mistakes in that field can be deadly. In fact, much of the instability that has hit Tennessee football over the last few years can be somewhat attributed to bad staff hires that got head coaches fired.
If things don’t work out with Ansley and Chaney, Pruitt will join that company. But what company is he joining. Well, we’re about to give you an idea. In this post, we will be ranking the five most notable assistant hires by a head coach that ended up getting that head coach hired.
They are all coordinator hires, although they could be on either side. Some of them were bad hires from the start. However, in other cases, the coordinators themselves are actually good coaches, but there was a clash with their system and the personnel they had.
Those are things any head coach has to take into account when he hires a coordinator or any staff member for that matter. It’s not just about X’s and O’s or even being able to teach and motivate. The coaches have to mesh with their personnel and their position coaches and off-field analysts along with their boss as well.
Taking all that into account, which hires did not work out well for the Vols? Let’s break that down here. These are five assistant coach hires that ended up resulting in the firing of Tennessee football head coaches.