On Monday, Tennessee football and Josh Heupel decided to move on from defensive coordinator Tim Banks. He had been the defensive playcaller for the Vols since Heupel got to campus in 2021, but a massive drop-off from a successful 2024 campaign to the 2025 season was too much to keep Banks on board.
As a result, Tennessee and Heupel are now in the midst of a search for their next defensive coordinator. To answer who UT needs to hire, it needs to diagnose what went so wrong this year with Banks.
Former Alabama quarterback and college football radio host Greg McElroy gave his thoughts on the situation during his show, McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning.
The crux of his answer was that he was not surprised the move was made, but he was disappointed. He thinks that Banks is a good coach, but struggled to find an identity with his unit this year, trying to do too much of everything instead of honing in on what works.
More From RTI: Ryan Walters Addresses Reports Connecting Him To Tennessee Defensive Coordinator Job
Here’s what he said.
“I’m not,” McElroy said about whether he’s surprised. “I’m disappointed for him, because I think he’s a good coach. I think the expectations got a little high for Tennessee’s defense with the style of offense that they play. It’s kind of what it comes down to. And that’s a weird deal, but the style of offense that they play is never going to lend to them being crazy, crazy good on defense unless their personnel is just ridiculous.
“If I’m Josh Heupel, and I’m looking at this entire situation, I’m sitting there thinking, alright, hang on a second. So we lost our top two corners going into the year. We’re relying on a true freshman corner on one side (Ty Redmond), who is a massive liability, and a transfer sophomore corner on the other side (Colton Hood) that’s been at three schools in three years. Yeah, we’re probably going to struggle with our pass defense.
“But here’s the thing that I think Josh Heupel also probably acknowledged. He probably watched the defense, and it’s like the defense doesn’t have an identity. And you have to have an identity. And it never felt like they developed one this year. I think Tim Banks is a really good coach. I just think he didn’t know what he had and he didn’t know how to coach it this year for whatever reason. He didn’t take dumb pills, we know that. The guy is a good coach and has coached great defenses in the past.
“I think he was in such a desperate mode because he knew the offense might not be quite as good. They were calling things that – you can’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none. You have to have some fall back defenses and or offensive plays that are your get out of jail free cards. Hey, come hell or high water, we can run this. I don’t feel like they ever had that this year. It was very strange to watch because we knew what they had last year. They’ve been a 4-2-5 cover three team that would like to bring five-man pressure…
“(This year), they were a little quarters, they were a little cover six, they were a little two-man, they were a little man-free, they were a little bit of field-fire zone, they were a little bit of boundary match zone, they were a little bit of two-trap. They were everything. It was too much.
“I think that it’s because they were trying to overcompensate for their lack of legit personnel, and that’s a hard thing to do. But hey, it’s just the way it goes, man. Coaching, it’s a tough business. Tim Banks was in the mix for big-time head coaching jobs a year ago, and now he’s out of a job. It’s awful.”
