Tennessee football adding Brian Jean-Mary means five DBs in base defense

Slowly but surely, new Tennessee football head coach Josh Heupel continues to round out his defensive staff after introducing his full offensive staff earlier this week. On Friday, he added another member to the unit on defense.

Michigan Wolverines linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary is heading to Rocky Top. A Charlie Strong protege, Jean-Mary was the South Florida Bulls’ defensive coordinator under Strong from 2017 to 2019. He was Strong’s linebackers coach with the Louisville Cardinals from 2010 to 2013 and the Texas Longhorns from 2014 to 2016.

Before joining Strong’s staff, Jean-Mary spent six years with the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, again coaching linebackers, under Chan Gailey and Paul Johnson. So he has worked under Gailey, Johnson, Strong and Jim Harbaugh. Chris Balas of TheWolverine.com was the first to report on Jean-Mary’s departure for Tennessee football.

With the addition of Jean-Mary, one thing is clear. The Vols will have five defensive backs in their base defense. How they organize everything else appears to still be up in the air, but Heupel clearly wants to be able to handle offenses that spread the field.

Jean-Mary has spent the last 11 years working in either a 3-3-5 or 4-2-5 base defense. Last year was his only year running a 4-2-5, to be fair. As a defensive coordinator, he ran Strong’s 3-3-5 and was all about forcing turnovers, averaging two forced turnovers a game in two of his years at USF.

In addition to Jean-Mary, though, defensive coordinator Tim Banks is all about the five defensive back base set. Working with Brent Pry the past five years with the Penn State Nittany Lions, Banks’ bread and butter has been the 4-2-5 base defensive set.

Now, Willie Martinez and Rodney Garner are different stories. Garner has run a standard 4-3 almost his whole career, particularly working under John Chavis with Tennessee football and Kevin Steele with Auburn. Martinez ran the same thing working under Randy Shannon with the UCF Knights the past few years and even under John Jancek with the Vols.

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However, Martinez also worked under Bob Shoop for a year on Rocky Top, and Shoop ran a hybrid 4-3/4-2-5. In his one year under Luke Fickell, he actually worked in a hybrid 3-3-5/4-2-5/4-3 defense. So he’s familiar with the system.

Another thing it looks like the Vols will be focusing on is exotic coverages over pure man-to-man. Jean-Mary’s entire career at the FBS level until last year was working under coaches who ran zone blitzes and based everything on disguising those blitzes. Last year, under Don Brown, the focus was a Cover 1.

Steele and Chavis also based everything out of zone blitzes, so that’s where Garner’s experience is as well. Again, Martinez has seen a bit more, as Shannon wasn’t married to a philosophy on that front. But he’ll definitely be familiar with it. With Banks running the show, much of the blitzing could come from defensive backs, which could make things similar to last year with Jeremy Pruitt.

What’s clear is that Tennessee football has a defensive staff built around stopping offenses that like to spread the field With Eliah Drinkwitz at the Missouri Tigers, Dan Mullen at the Florida Gators and now Shane Beamer at the South Carolina Gamecocks, that’s probably a solid philosophy. They’re building for what they’ll face more of next year.