Tune into any collegiate sporting event, and it’s not too difficult to spot participants or fans claiming, “We’re No. 1!”
The “We’re No. 101” chant is a bit more obscure, yet that’s exactly where the Tennessee Volunteers finished among 130 Division I football teams last season in third-down defense. The Vols surrendered 91 first downs out of 216 third-down opportunities for a 42.13% yield rate, and third-and-long situations were often more troublesome than third-and-short.
“We want to be better on third-and-long,” Vols second-year defensive coordinator Tim Banks said Thursday in a news conference. “I thought we did a good job of getting some guys in high-predictable situations – third-and-8 and third-and-9 – and we didn’t cash in as much as we needed to. We obviously took a deep dive into that and tried to evaluate it from scheme to players to situations.”
Tennessee’s issues on third down defensively never improved throughout a mostly successful 7-6 debut season under Josh Heupel that ended with a 48-45 overtime loss to Purdue in the Music City Bowl. The Boilermakers scored a third-quarter touchdown on a third-and-goal from the 10, and they produced fourth-quarter scores from 62 and 70 yards out on third-and-6 and third-and-5 situations.
The Vols are months away from being able to display whether they will be improved in that category, but Banks said laying the groundwork now is very important in the process.
“You’re going to work on every single situation that you saw from last season, and you learn from the experiences that you had,” Banks said. “Ultimately, you can’t get it done until the game, but you obviously have to practice it, whether it’s third-and-extra long or third-and-medium or just making sure the kids understand clearly what the situation is. It’s not different from doing red zone or first-and-10.
“You’ve got to practice it to get ready for the season.”
The Vols tied for seventh nationally last season with 7.85 tackles for loss per game, but the objective this year is to maintain that kind of aggression while getting off the field much more often in surefire passing situations.
“Getting off the ball and getting to the quarterback is rule No. 1,” senior edge rusher Byron Young said. “You want to make it easy for your defensive backs, and you want to make the quarterback uncomfortable. When it’s third-and-12, we need to get in the quarterback’s face and make him make a bad pass.”
Banks entered his first spring in Knoxville with the Vols ravaged at linebacker, and this year’s predicament is a lack of cornerbacks due to injuries. He prefers the current landscape because there was no reference point a year ago after Heupel was hired in late January following the firing of Jeremy Pruitt.
Though there is more familiarity these days, Banks said establishing the identity of a defense always involves a reset.
“You want to be tough. You want to be relentless in how hard you play, and you want to be smart,” Banks said. “Those are three components you’re constantly trying to build a defense around.”
SEC tabs Cutcliffe
Former Tennessee offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe was named Thursday as special assistant to the commissioner for football relations by the Southeastern Conference.
Cutcliffe was an offensive assistant for the Vols from 1982-98, serving as offensive coordinator from 1993-98 and earning the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant in 1998, when the Vols won the national championship. He returned to Knoxville as offensive coordinator for the 2006-07 seasons, which was in between his head-coaching stints at Ole Miss and Duke.
The SEC via a release stated the 67-year-old Cutcliffe “will provide guidance to the SEC Commissioner’s office for the purpose of enhancing the overall quality of football competition in the SEC in areas including game management, communications, playing rules, national policies and scheduling best practices.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.