Tennessee football: Four potential concerns with Vols hiring Jay Graham

Overall, Tennessee football hiring Jay Graham to replace David Johnson should work out. But there are some concerns for the Volunteers.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Tennessee football likely made a great hire in Jay Graham. We have said as much over the past two days, and those facts don’t change just because of what we are bringing up now.

Graham is a great recruiter, has a track record when it comes to producing great running backs, and he is a former Vol who is familiar with the current staff and Jeremy Pruitt. You couldn’t ask for much more from this hire, as it has almost everything on paper.

As a result, the move for him to replace David Johnson as running backs coach and potentially be Tennessee football’s special teams coach is a net positive. It’s hard to see this not working out for Rocky Top.

However, very few hires, even when it comes to assistant coaches, are perfect. There are always concerns to raise, and that’s no different here. Graham does have a few drawbacks that we have to address if we are going to be honest about this hire.

So in this post, we are going to look at those drawbacks. These issues deal with his past throughout his career as an assistant coach, and there are certain areas where it is very fair to be critical of him.

This doesn’t mean that he won’t work out, and it doesn’t mean that he can’t do a lot of good for UT. It simply means that we have to raise awareness of potential negatives that could surface, as nothing is a 100 percent sure bet.

What type of negatives are we talking about? How could it affect things in the future? Let’s break it all down here. This is our ranking of the four potential reasons for concern surrounding Tennessee football bringing back Graham as running backs coach.