Tennessee football: Joe Osovet is the cutting-edge assistant the Vols need

With Joe Osovet being promoted to Tennessee football’s tight ends coach, the Volunteers have a cutting-edge assistant to gain a huge advantage.

When Phillip Fulmer became athletic director, effectively nixed the Mike Leach hire and then brought in Jeremy Pruitt, the message was clear. He wanted to restore the toughness, blue-collar mindset that built Tennessee football into a powerhouse in the first place.

That’s expected for a former offensive lineman. However, there were valid concerns that in doing so, the Vols would completely abandon the analytics side of the sport, which is does have a place. Pruitt is proving, though, that he values that as much as anything.

With the promotion of Joe Osovet to tight ends coach, Pruitt has assured Tennessee football won’t lose one of its most brilliant minds to another rival school. That was the most important thing in hiring Osovet two years prior.

The Vols’ staff is made up of former high-quality players who are elite motivational guys, can recruit and connect with the top talent and bring a toughness mindset that is necessary to compete in the SEC. If they don’t fit that profile, then they fit the profile of being able to adapt and adjust based on their personnel but still coaching a traditional style.

Osovet breaks ranks with both of those things. Now, Pruitt has mixed in his hard-nosed SEC staff with a guy who comes from the Northeast and focuses on things from a completely different perspective. It’s an odd collection, but it’s one that should work.

This is the guy who, 19 years ago, invented the RPO, which was then called the manipulation scheme and is now used across the country in the sport. So Osovet can help keep the Vols ahead of the curve while they remain hard-nosed. But he is not just a one-trick pony who got lucky with an invention at the turn of the century.

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Since then, Osovet has used his football mind to adapt and generate high-powered offenses. Before heading to Rocky Top, he was the head coach and offensive coordinator at ASA College in Brooklyn for two years. In 2017, his team averaged 41.9 points per game, and he was named NEFC Coach of the Year.

That was his second time winning the award in a decade, as Osovet coached at Nassau Community College 2013 through 2015 and won the award there in 2014, when his team went 10-0 and won the NEFC championship. Osovet was also named JuCo Coach of the Year that season. So it goes without saying that the guy knows how to coach the game.

Pruitt brought Osovet on with plans of eventually getting him onto the field, but he has spent the past two years in a quality control position, most recently being the Director of Programming for Football. However, with Osovet actually on the field now, the Vols have a staff that combines all the best attributes in coaches.

Analytics and a cutting-edge mentality was the final piece of the puzzle for Tennessee football’s staff. Osovet brings that more than anybody else, and although he’ll specifically be coaching tight ends, he’ll have a major impact in how the offense approaches games. The guy has too great of a track record for Pruitt to not allow him to have such a say.