{"id":117090,"date":"2025-06-09T21:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T21:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/117090\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T21:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T21:59:11","slug":"former-tennessee-star-longtime-nfl-assistant-marion-hobby-joining-volunteers-as-defensive-assistant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/117090\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Tennessee star, longtime NFL assistant Marion Hobby joining Volunteers as defensive assistant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennessee<\/a> is adding longtime defensive assistant coach Marion Hobby<\/a> to their staff, per Matt Zenitz<\/a> of CBS Sports<\/a>. On3\u2019s Pete Nakos<\/a> confirmed the news, adding that the hire is for the position of defensive analyst. The Volunteers are adding an experienced teacher to their staff.<\/p>\n

Previously, Hobby was a First-team All-SEC player for Tennessee during his playing days. He spent some time in the NFL after being drafted with the No. 74 overall pick in the 1990 NFL Draft. His first coaching gig came with the UT Martin Skyhawks<\/a> in 1995, and since then he\u2019s been a part of some impressive staffs.<\/p>\n

He spent the 1998 college football season with Tennessee as the team\u2019s assistant strength and conditioning coach. His top claim to fame was being Clemson\u2019s<\/a> co-defensive coordinator\/defensive ends coach from 2011-2016. Since then, he\u2019s coached in the NFL, part for the staffs for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals from 2017-2024.<\/p>\n

As you can tell, Hobby is certainly an experienced coach, and that\u2019ll be valuable to Tennessee\u2019s mission in 2025. The Volunteers are hoping to get back to the College Football Playoff, and adding an experienced coach who knows what it takes to succeed in Knoxville is a huge move.<\/p>\n

More on the Tennessee Volunteers, 2025 season<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Paul Finebaum is bearish on Tennessee heading into 2025. While he believes the Vols did what they had to do when it comes to quarterback\u00a0Nico Iamaleava<\/a>, he\u2019s not super enthusiastic about where the team stands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the biggest story of the off-season, with Nico leaving. Joey Aguilar<\/a>, from App State via UCLA is not the perfect answer,\u201d Finebaum stated, via SportsCenter earlier this offseason. \u201cHe\u2019s good, but he\u2019s not great. Nico could\u2019ve been great, even though he wasn\u2019t last year. Quite frankly, I don\u2019t like Tennessee\u2019s chances of the Playoff at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite all the drama, Aguilar and the Volunteers will be expected to compete, after making it to the College Football Playoff<\/a>\u00a0in 2024. Whether or not the quarterback can do enough to make Tennessee fans forget about Iamaleava remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

Tennessee was hoping to repeat that success and even build on it in 2025. However, with a difficult schedule ahead and newfound questions at quarterback following some NIL drama with Iamaleava, that\u2019s going to be much more difficult to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennessee is adding longtime defensive assistant coach Marion Hobby to their staff, per Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28898,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-117090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-marion-hobby","10":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114655655741086521","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}