Tennessee football: Four potential concerns over Brian Niedermeyer moving to coach linebackers

After two years as Tennessee football’s tight ends coach, Brian Niedermeyer now leads the Volunteers inside linebackers. Here’s why that may be concerning.

Balance and objectivity have encouraged us to give the positives and the negatives when it comes to offseason staff hires by Tennessee football, and that’s no different for Brian Niedermeyer. However, we have to say, it was hard to find too many negatives.

Niedermeyer has been a part of two conference championship programs and a national championship program in his short career coaching. Every single program he was at got worse the year after he left.

We had to say this to point out that Tennessee football is lucky to have this guy on staff. He enters his third year with the program and was recognized as National Recruiter of the Year back in 2019. So the guy has a great track record.

However, this is all about his value being on the staff. Pruitt did move him over from tight ends coach to inside linebackers coach, where he will replace Kevin Sherrer. Joe Osovet, meanwhile, has been promoted to tight ends coach after two years in an off-field role.

Right now, it’s hard to see anything wrong with the move. But in this post, we’re going to break down the things that could become potential concerns. Given Niedermeyer’s track record, we’ll say up front that all of this should be taken with a grain of salt.

What’s clear, though, is the fact that there are a few drawbacks to this very young, rising star. Pruitt hasn’t missed yet on a hire, but as we say with all of his moves, there’s always the possibility of one not working out for the first time.

Could that be Niedermeyer in his new role? Just how possible is that? Let’s break it all down here. These are the four potential concerns of Tennessee football moving Niedermeyer from tight ends coach to inside linebackers coach.