Former Tennessee Vols defensive coordinator reportedly interviews for NFL defensive coordinator job
Former Tennessee Vols defensive coordinator Derrick Ansley is hoping to land new job in the NFL in 2025. Ansley, who spent the 2024 season as the Green Bay Packers' passing game coordinator, interviewed for the Atlanta Falcons' defensive coordinator position this week. The Falcons are in the market for a new defensive coordinator after moving […]
Former Tennessee Vols defensive coordinator Derrick Ansley is hoping to land new job in the NFL in 2025.
Ansley, who spent the 2024 season as the Green Bay Packers' passing game coordinator, interviewed for the Atlanta Falcons' defensive coordinator position this week.
The Falcons are in the market for a new defensive coordinator after moving on from Jimmy Lake after just one season.
Ansley previously served as the Los Angeles Chargers' defensive coordinator in 2023. He spent the 2021 and 2022 seasons as the Chargers' defensive back coach.
The former Troy cornerback has had two different stints at Tennessee. Ansley was Derek Dooley's defensive backs coach in 2012. He returned to Rocky Top in 2019 to serve as Jeremy Pruitt's defensive coordinator for two seasons.
Ansley was one of several Vols assistants implicated in the Pruitt recruiting scandal that rocked the program in late 2020/early 2021.
The former Tennessee assistant was handed a two-year show cause by the NCAA, though Ansley asserted in 2022 that the recruiting violations were were "caused and overseen by" Pruitt and other UT staff members.
"It is Mr. Ansley's position that his name has been improperly joined with these other Tennessee football program employees who were violators of the NCAA Bylaws and the COVID shutdown rules," wrote Ansley's lawyer, Gregg E. Clifton, while arguing Ansley's innocence in late 2022 (via the Knoxville News Sentinel).
Ansley has not returned to the college ranks since leaving Tennessee after the 2020 season.
