Tennessee football’s defense is retooled for the 2026 season from both the personnel and coaching standpoints. New defensive coordinator Jim Knowles is bringing in a right-hand man, as well. That’s newly named co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach, Anthony Poindexter.
Now that Poindexter is familiarizing himself with Rocky Top, he stopped by ‘The Mike Keith Show‘ to give his thoughts. He was asked about being recruited to UT as a player, his coaching career, Jim Knowles and more.
Here’s what Poindexter said.
More From RTI: Former Tennessee HC Jeremy Pruitt Reportedly Being Targeted for Big Ten Coaching Role
Being recruited by Tennessee as a prep prospect out of Virginia
“I actually took an official visit here.”
Who recruited him for Tennessee
“Lovie Smith.”
If he seriously considered Tennessee as a recruit
“Yeah, I took an official visit here. What spooked me out of coming here was, I’m only four hours away, but when we was coming down, it had a snowstorm, so it turned into, like, an eight-hour drive instead of a four-hour drive. And I was like, ‘Oh, Lord, this is way too far.’ Like, I thought I was going to California or something. So I really hadn’t left my hometown much. And I loved it down here, but it was just a little too far from home for me.”
Tennessee getting commitments from that snowstorm after recruits were on campus for longer because of the weather
“If my mind serves me right, I think Peyton (Manning) came in that weekend. I guess it was a good visit for him. I was very interested in (Tennessee), like I said, the snowstorm kind of spooked me, though. I just thought it was way too far from home.”
When his football career ended and he started thinking about what was next
“Well, once I had the injury, it was like, ‘How can I piece it back together so I can play again?’ Now, back then, when you dislocated your knee, it was career over. Like, the medicine wasn’t (there). But my doctor, Dr. Frank McHugh at the time, he always was encouraging, like, ‘You can do this.’ And he did the surgery. I tried to come back. I got back. I was never the same player, but I got back enough where got two years in, fortunate to be on the (Ravens) Super Bowl team. But my mindset the whole time was like, ‘What, what’s the next step?’ I can sulk, I can cry, I can be mad at the world that my career ended like this. But I was just like, ‘Hey, I gotta move o.’ And I got a call from Al Golden, who was coaching with Al Groh at the time at Virginia, and he was like he’s looking for guys that played here and want to come back as a GA. I’m like, ‘Well,’ I told my wife at the time, I said, like, ‘I guess it’s time for me to retire. Like, I think I’m going to try this coaching thing.’ And 25 years later, I’m still in it.”
How much his career path — going from being a high-level player to having an injury cut his career short — has helped him as a coach
“I think it helped me. It gave me perspective on life. You enjoy the moments. Every moment, not just big moments, little moments. I mean, you just enjoy things and if you’re around me enough, I’m always going to be upbeat, be happy. I mean, I’ve just been fortunate, more than, to have the career I had as a player. But I’m fortunate to be in the position I’ve been in as a coach and had the career I had as a coach. So things happen in life. I’ve been blessed to get this far and have great things happen to me. But growing up I saw some hard things. My grandma, one of my grandmas, didn’t have running water until 1998 in her house. My dad had a lot of tragedy in his youth, losing two brothers and a father before he was 16, and having to raise his two sisters with his mom. And so you see things. And life goes on and people get their own curveballs in life. But, I mean, to get hurt playing football, the game you love, it ain’t the end of the world. So I just try to keep a positive attitude and keep it kicking.”
If it gives him more of an opportunity to be a mentor to Tennessee players
“Yeah, you tell them, like, ‘Man, don’t take this for granted now.’ It’s tough days, training camp and some things that’s not fun. But I say, ‘You gotta enjoy it all, you know, because you never know when that play or that year is gonna be your last year of you playing. So just enjoy it and enjoy the journey. You’ll never be in a team setting like this again as a player. You know, you can coach all you wanna coach. You’re still not a player, you know? I get the tingles coming out of the locker room on game day nowadays, but I’m running to the sideline. I know I’m not going in. So I just speak to them honestly, and the importance of getting educated. You gotta get your education. You can’t coach if you don’t have a college degree. There’s certain things you just can’t do. And yes, you wanna go to the league, you wanna get all this stuff football-wise, but just understand there’s more to life than just football. You gotta have plan B ready to go and I’m the example of having to have plan B ready to go.”
If his players know how good he was as a college football player
“Nah, I never tell them … the last three stops I’ve been at, I never really told them that I played. I’d be like, ‘Yeah, I used to play.’ But never told them, like, stats or anything like that … never showed them any of it. And then if somebody come to me, and I’d be like, ‘Alright, man, I can show you something.’ And it’s ‘Oh, Coach, I, you never…’ I’d be like, ‘Yeah, man.’ So I just figure they got the internet nowadays, so especially if I’m a new coach coming into a room. Like, wouldn’t you look up your coach and see if the dude know what he’s talking about or has he played or whatever? But most of them don’t. They don’t. It’s ok.”
Penn State hiring Jim Knowles, him telling James Franklin to go hire Knowles even though he could have become the defensive coordinator
“Yeah, I have no ego. Obviously I’ve been following Coach Knowles for a long time. I was at Virginia when he was at Duke. And I told him this, I said, ‘You’ll never forget. You won’t remember this, Coach.’ But me and my wife was in the airport, and I was a young coach, fairly young coach, and he was sitting. We was getting ready to get on a plane. We had just come from the convention, and we just walked up to him and we just started chatting. And he held a 15-20-minute conversation with me. And I never forgot it. Now, I had never ran across him since, maybe one time on the road recruiting. But then I watched what he did at Ohio State, and I’m like, ‘Coach, if, if you’ve got a chance to go get Jim Knowles, you should go get Jim Knowles. He’s the best in the country. He’s the best doing this in the business.’ So I don’t really have that ego. I said I figure I can learn from Jim Knowles if Jim Knowles comes. So it was fortunate that relationship started. That’s one of the main reasons I’m here.”
Working with Jim Knowles at Penn State last season
“It’s great. I mean, very intelligent coach. He really knows schematics. He’s got a way with the players. It helped me develop as a coach in how I saw defense and how I saw offense, so it’s been awesome. Been awesome.”
Having no hesitation when the opportunity to follow him to Tennessee came up
“Nah, no hesitation at all. And look, credit to him, I mean, like I said, we met a long time ago, but I was with him basically nine months, and for him to come to me and ask me to come with him, that speaks volumes of him and what he thought of me. So I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll come with you, Coach.’”
Tennessee’s defense being rebuilt, the personnel in the secondary being different and how he would characterize the group
“Well, we wanted to go out and get some veteran guys. Obviously we got a few guys that’s been in the system to play with us. That’s important that they know kind of how we do business and how Coach Knowles calls it and what he expects. But we wanted to go out and get guys that are aggressive, love playing football, tough, want to compete and try to win, play dominant defense. So hopefully that’s what we got. And I think that’s what we did go out and get, so we’ll see. We gotta coach it and develop it, so hopefully good things gonna happen.”
What he expects Tennessee safeties to do to make the entire defense successful
“First off, people say, oh, you put all these guys in the league. Well, I had a part in putting them in the league. These guys were talented. They talented. They’re highly talented. But when you’re looking for a safety, you’re looking for a guy with instincts and a guy that kind of got a natural feel for playing this position. He gotta be able to see things that a lot of times you really can’t coach. They can see it. You put them in the system and they got a feel for just how to play the game. I just think that all of them, as far as the league piece, that they all had a competitive spirit to them that really had drive. I didn’t have to pump them up every day to get them to practice, to get them to do the small things in football that no one likes to do. Everybody want to play in the game, but everybody don’t want to practice and practice the right way. So when you’re looking at it, to develop these guys, you just gotta have guys that got that innate drive and energy to play football. And if they tough, because I told them, ‘I can’t deal with softness.’ I mean, that’s just part of who I am. But if they’re tough, they’re competitive and they’ve got a feel for the game, they’ll be a good safety.”
How playing safety in today’s game is different than when he was playing
“They spread too many people out. The safety is almost playing like corner, I’m like, ‘Oh, God, man.’ They gotta have a little bit more open-field and spatial skill than what we had to have back in the day. I mean, it was two backs, tight end. Like, the game was totally different. Game played basically in between the hash marks and you could just come run downhill. I mean, they was gonna run the ball and then play-action pass. That’s what it seemed like to me when I was playing. But nowadays you gotta be more versatile, more athletic. But like I say, it will still come back to your, your toughness, your tackling ability, how you see the game, and the energy you play the game with. So it didn’t change, but mostly the offenses have changed, you know, which makes the defense have to change a little bit.”
His thought on sometimes using three safeties in the Jim Knowles defense
“Well it’s really two safeties and a nickel, you know? But it looks, it presents itself as three safeties. But that nickel position, he’s gotta have safety skill, he’s gotta have corner skill, so he’s a unique position in that way. And in some way, he gotta have a little bit of linebacker in him, because he fits the box some, too. So it presents a different look to the offense, so they really don’t know what safety inserting or what’s DB inserting into the run or into the front or into the coverage. So it’s been great. I had a little bit of exposure to it, but not this in-depth level of exposure to it until I met Coach Knowles. And it’s been great.”
If it feels like last season was his introduction to the defense, now he gets a chance to master it at Tennessee
“Yeah, I’m in the master class. I’m getting it from the horse’s mouth. It’s been exciting just to learn how it all fits together and how he uses it. I think the kids here are gonna love it. And I think all DBs love this system, especially interior guys like the safeties and the nickel. They get to do a lot of jobs. They get to blitz, they get to cover, they get to run fit, they get to play in the high field. So you get a chance to really highlight all your athletic abilities playing in this defense.”
What he’s able to do with Tennessee’s defensive backs right now
“We meet with them. We’ve been on the road, we’ve been recruiting. Right now we’re starting to meet, introduce them to the system, introduce them to the expectation. They’re obviously working out, running and lifting. But right now you’re just trying to build those relationships with them, trying to be around them enough where I’m new to them, they’re new to me. So I just wanna get that relationship. I think you can coach kids once you know who the kid is, and once he know who you are. Where my heart is coming from, then I need to know where their heart coming from. But it’s been good. It’s been good. We got really good kids here. “
The relationship between himself as a coach and Tennessee players, how that relates to bringing the secondary together quickly
“Of course. I think we gotta have great relationships. I think when you have a great relationship with a player, he allows you to coach him. And that’s the most important piece. You gotta be able to coach him, to get him ready to play in the games, ready to play in the system. So a lot of these guys, like I say we just got good kids, so as we start to learn each other, and they learn me, they learn Coach Knowles and learn the staff, it should show out in how we play defense.”
The most exciting part about the first month of the job
“Well, looking at the pictures of the ’T’, I think I’m excited to run out in the ’T’. But it’s all new. It’s exciting. You’re at Tennessee, this big-time program. The fanbase is energized and excited about us being here. And obviously Coach Heup is. So we just wanna do a good job for them and do a good job for this fanbase and play good defense.”
