{"id":764810,"date":"2026-02-20T15:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/764810\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:26:10","slug":"new-tennessee-football-dc-jim-knowles-explains-why-his-past-defenses-have-been-so-successful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/764810\/","title":{"rendered":"New Tennessee Football DC Jim Knowles Explains Why His Past Defenses Have Been So Successful"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Jim<\/a>Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles. Photo via RTI.<\/p>\n

Following the firing of defensive coordinator Tim Banks, Tennessee football head coach Josh Heupel tabbed well-respected Jim Knowles as his replacement. Knowles was considered one of the top options available after building up top units at Duke and Oklahoma State and helping lead Ohio State to a national championship.<\/p>\n

Seemingly, at every stop, he\u2019s been able to turn the program\u2019s defense into not just an acceptable group, but a truly dominant force. As he attempts to do the same at Tennessee after just one season at Penn State, he reflected on what has led to his immense success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe players, number one, so the players,\u201d Knowles said<\/a>. \u201cBut two is having answers. That is the most critical thing, having answers. Because you\u2019re always going to get into situations in a game where you have to have an answer for how they\u2019re hurting you or how they\u2019re attacking you. Or you\u2019re going to go week to week in college football where offenses change. So that\u2019s my job. I think that\u2019s why it\u2019s worked, why our stop rate has been so good, is because we\u2019re going to have answers. We\u2019re going to have answers to anything an offense can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

More From RTI:\u00a0Why Tennessee DC Jim Knowles Retained Two Key Defensive Coaches on the Vols\u2019 Staff<\/a><\/p>\n

Things haven\u2019t always clicked in year one for Knowles, though. Instead, at times, it\u2019s taken a couple of years for his defense to get its footing and surge toward the top of the statistical leaderboards.<\/p>\n

That has created a notion that his defense is tough to learn. As he looks to implement it at UT, there isn\u2019t much time to waste, though. Tennessee is urgently looking to return to College Football Playoff conversations after an 8-5 (4-4 SEC) season in 2025.<\/p>\n

As Knowles installs it this offseason, he says it\u2019s mostly a clean slate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done it differently at different places,\u201d Knowles said. \u201cBut here we are starting from a clean slate. That doesn\u2019t mean that we don\u2019t use some things that they\u2019ve used in the past. I try to listen to maybe a certain way that they called a certain thing, and I can change on that if they\u2019re already familiar with a certain term. But in general, I\u2019d say we\u2019re starting from a clean slate.\u201d<\/p>\n

What will help is the addition of four Penn State transfers who played under Knowles a year ago. Linebacker Amare Campbell, edge rusher Chaz Coleman, defensive tackle Xavier Gilliam and defensive back Dejuan Lane all join the roster and could be integral to the group hitting the ground running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles. Photo via RTI. Following the firing of defensive coordinator Tim Banks, Tennessee football…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[7,2252,1209,6364],"class_list":{"0":"post-764810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-jim-knowles","10":"tag-tennessee-football","11":"tag-tennessee-vols"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116103662054519668","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764810","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=764810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}