Vols defensive coordinator Jim Knowles will ‘probably’ have to change the schematics of his defense with no Chaz Coleman on the team
The Tennessee Volunteers are still waiting to find out if Penn State Nittany Lions EDGE transfer addition Chaz Coleman will be playing football this upcoming season on Rocky Top.
It’s anyone’s guess at this point if EDGE Chaz Coleman will suit up for the Tennessee Vols this fall.
Coleman, who played for new Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles last season at Penn State, was one of the Vols’ most important transfer additions this offseason.
The talented EDGE, however, missed most of spring practice with the Vols, and he hasn’t reported to Tennessee yet for summer workouts.
At this point, there’s not a lot of optimism that Coleman is going to play for Tennessee in 2026.
“He was in spring practice for maybe not even a week,” said On3’s Chris Low on Thursday. “He did very little, if anything, during the offseason conditioning program and the weight program. Here we are now, what, three days [after] the players are supposed to be back and he’s not back. I think it’s really to the point now where he’s left Josh Heupel and his staff with very little [choice]. Unless, again, there’s something else out there that comes to life. But we’re probably to the point where it’s unlikely that we see him play football at Tennessee.”
What would no Chaz Coleman mean for Tennessee’s defense?
Most of the conversation surrounding Coleman over the last month has focused on Tennessee’s decision to pursue him in the portal. That’s certainly a fair question considering this is an issue that’s popped up for the Vols several times in recent years.
But the better question may be how Tennessee’s defense will be impacted on the field this fall without Coleman.
A big reason why the Vols pursued Coleman, outside of his elite attributes, is that he played in Knowles’ defense last season, giving Tennessee an EDGE player who already knows the scheme.
If Coleman doesn’t rejoin the team, that advantage will obviously disappear.
And it could also mean that Knowles will need to adjust his defensive scheme (the Vols lost EDGE rushers Jordan Ross and Caleb Herring to the transfer portal this offseason, so there aren’t a lot of proven pass-rushing options on UT’s roster).
VolQuest’s Brent Hubbs joined 104.5 The Zone’s Ramon and Will on Friday and he discussed the schematic changes Knowles could be forced to make without Coleman on the team.
“It’s a lack of a body,” said Hubbs when asked how not having Coleman could impact the defense. “And it’s the lack of a body that obviously Jim Knowles and the staff that came from Penn State were clearly believers in. They were a big part of why he transferred to Tennessee back in January, according to everything Chaz Coleman said.
“Now the flipside to that is Chaz Coleman has 150 snaps in his career at the college level. He has eight tackles and he has one sack. He has a ton of potential, but he is not a guy like (Penn State transfer addition) Amare Campbell at linebacker where there’s a big resume of productivity. There’s a ton of potential with Chaz Coleman, but he doesn’t have this great resume of productivity at this point, because he just hasn’t played a lot. But you would be taking a talented guy with great upside out of your program. And what it means is that Kedric Golston, Carter Gooden, Hezekiah Harris, some of these young kids are going to have to play some situationally. I think it means Jim Knowles would have to do some things schematically, probably different.”
“You might play two big ends, two bigger bodied ends at times,” continued Hubbs. “Maybe you play Mariyon Dye and Tyree Weathersby at the same time. Maybe you end up in some schematics where you’re in basically a 4-3 look, or you’re in a 3-3 look and you walk somebody up to the edge and play a linebacker off the edge in certain pass rush situations. Jim Knowles makes a lot of money. He’s been engineering defenses for a long time. There’s a lot of ways to skin the cat. And if you’re him, your focus right now is on figuring out how to do it with the belief that Chaz Coleman is not going to be here. I think all of your work right now is on that. And if somebody needs to change their body type a little bit, maybe drop a little bit of weight, those are things you’re dealing with with (strength coach) Derek Owings right now to have your players and your personnel that you want in those positions to look the way that they need to look physically to get ready to go in August.”
The good news for Tennessee is that Knowles always builds his scheme around the players he has that particular year. Knowles obviously has philosophies he believes in, and certain elements that will always be part of his defense, but it evolves based on his personnel. So this isn’t something that Knowles is going to struggle to fix.
But Hubbs’ comments are a reminder that Coleman’s situation is going to have an impact on the entire team.