Tennessee football: A.J. Artis departure continues instability in key area

You could point to plenty of things that undid Tennessee football dating back to the middle of the Butch Jones era. However, the most underrated aspect has been a lack of stability in the strength and conditioning program.

That concern now continues. Strength coach A.J. Artis, who was retained as the Vols hired Josh Heupel, is now leaving to take the same job with the South Florida Bulls, according to Patrick Brown of GoVols247. Kurt Schmidt, who comes to Rocky Top with Heupel from the UCF Knights, will take on the job.

Schmidt is not a bad hire given his track record. Reporting on him with Tennessee football dates back to Feb. 5, from John Brice of Football Scoop. He was at UCF for three years and also spent time with the Missouri Tigers and in the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers, where he was from 2008 until 2012.

However, assuming he takes the job, he’ll be the Vols’ fourth strength coach in five years and the sixth person to run the show in seven years. Artis was promoted this past year to replace Craig Fitzgerald, who was with Jeremy Pruitt for two years before joining the New York Giants.

There’s no doubt that these issues have played a role in the Vols underachieving. In 2015, UT went 9-4 and accomplished two things for the first time in eight years: winning more than seven games and finishing in the top 25. The program seemed to have finally returned under Butch Jones.

That offseason, though, Jones parted ways with strength coach Dave Lawson. He let assistant coach Michael Szerszen run the show. The result was disastrous. A team that was picked to win the East underachieved and went 9-4 due to major issues in the secondary.

A year later, Jones brought in Rock Gullickson. The seeds laid from instability, however, made for another disastrous, injury-riddled season as UT suffered through a horrendous 4-8 campaign. Injuries had as much to do with that as bad coaching.

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For all Pruitt’s faults, he did make a good move when he overhauled the strength and conditioning program in 2018. It seemed to work his first two years as well, as Tennessee football had relatively few injuries under Fitzgerald.

Last year, though, the combination of another change and COVID limiting the practice time of players made for another disastrous season filled with injuries and key players missing time. That wasn’t really Artis’ fault, though.

Now, with Schmidt taking over, the Vols are hoping for stability again. Will it work? Only time will tell. However, conditioning will have to change since the program is going to be more based on tempo in the future given Heupel’s system. It’s hard to know how that will work out.

What’s clear, though, is Tennessee football needs a consistent program here. Otherwise, more injuries and less productivity will continue to be an issue with this program. It undid their dream season in 2016, wrecked Jones’ tenure in 2017 and helped contribute to why last year was so disappointing. Heupel obviously wants to avoid that in the future.