Jeremy Pruitt on Friday revealed the positional assignments for his second staff as Tennessee’s head coach.
New hire Jim Chaney will be a “walk around” offensive coordinator without a positional assignment, while fellow new hire Tee Martin will be Pruitt’s assistant head coach while coaching wide receivers.
To make room for Martin, current wide receivers coach David Johnson will move to running backs and running backs coach Chris Weinke will handle the quarterbacks. Weinke won the Heisman Trophy while playing quarterback at Florida State in 2000.
On defense, new hire Derrick Ansley will be Tennessee’s defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach. Tennessee did not designate a defensive coordinator in Pruitt’s first season; Kevin Sherrer and Chris Rumph split those duties, while Pruitt called plays. Sherrer and Rumph will remain on staff; Rumph’s duties as co-defensive coordinator and outside linebackers coach remain unchanged, while Sherrer will trade his co-coordinator title for special teams coordinator duties while continuing to coach the Vols’ inside linebackers.
Pruitt said Ansley will call plays for Tennessee.
Tennessee will have six coaches on offense and four on defense.
Pruitt: "I'm really the fifth assistant on the defensive side of the ball."
— David Ubben (@davidubben) February 15, 2019
Tennessee invested heavily in Pruitt and his staff. Multiple Vols staffers made appearances in our salary series, and the assistants as a whole made $5.675 million, 11th most in the country. The Volunteers went 5-7 in Pruitt’s debut season, losing a shot at a bowl game after dropping games to Missouri and Vanderbilt to close the season.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.
