Tennessee Volunteers head football coach Josh Heupel and UT Knoxville AD Danny White brought in a slow-moving, late-bloomer of a defensive coordinator this offseason with the Jim Knowles hire in December.
As ESPN's Bill Connelly notes, that puts all the pressure on Heupel and the offensive coaching staff to overcompensate for what could be a slow start in building a competent point-prevention unit on Rocky Top under Knowles.
"The Vols collapsed from sixth to 63rd in defensive SP+ last season, so Josh Heupel called in a ringer. Knowles has produced seven top-25 defenses in 12 years, but his first season in a given location doesn't usually produce improvement -- it usually takes him a year to get his footing. With a brand-new quarterback and potentially questionable offense, Heupel needs the defense to rebound immediately," Connelly wrote.
So far in camp, Tennessee has impressed defensively, to be fair. Per Heupel, during the first spring scrimmage,  "I thought defensively we played extremely well, created a couple turnovers. Didn’t give up a lot of big plays, so a good day."
Still, the hype was high for the Penn State Nittany Lions' defense last year during the preseason, too. Penn State ended up giving up first-down conversions on 40.9% of third downs and 326.8 total yards per game. Knowles was one of the many components of the James Franklin era that weren't retained in the transition to Matt Campbell's Iowa State Cyclones-centric program.
Jim Knowles' reputation nose-dived after leaving Ohio State
Some of us thought Knowles was a defensive genius after the way the Buckeyes' defense looked in 2024. Then Matt Patricia took a lot of that same talent, minus NFL draft stars like DT Tyleik Williams and EDGE rushers J.T. Tuimoloau and Jack Sawyer, and made Ohio State the No. 1 defense in most metrics.
Knowles has a chance to provide the defensive fortitude that often lacked under former Vols DC Tim Banks and make the 2025 season in State College, PA, look like an anomaly. After all, Knowles had strong years with the Oklahoma State Cowboys and OSU, minus the 2022 season.
He'd better hope he doesn't get caught in another disastrous campaign for a big-name brand whose fanbase has had enough of not getting the job done for the second straight year.