As new Tennessee LEOs coach AJ Jackson was finishing his introductory press conference on Thursday afternoon, he set up a tease that had the media on the edge of their seats. Jackson was the third of Tennessee’s new defensive coaches to host a presser on Thursday, with the fourth and final one coming from new cornerbacks coach Derek Jones.
“The cheetah man,” Jackson said when asked about Jones. “Excellent recruiter. Leader of men. Well-known for how he interacts with the kids. Even though we have an older staff, guys like Cheetah, they’re still able to relate to the younger players and get the best out of those guys.”
The question of whether Jones was actually referred to as Cheetah immediately followed Jackson’s remark.
“You’ll find out,” Jackson said with a big laugh, pointing to Jones as he walked to the podium. “You’ll find out.”
Naturally, the first question to Jones was about the Cheetah nickname. Jones’ social media handle on X, @CoachDJCheetah, directly incorporates the nickname into things.
“Well, really, it’s a nickname that came – I actually used to be a pretty fast guy back in my day, but that has evaporated,” the former SEC cornerback said with a grin. “But when I got to Duke, I’ve always used ‘cheetah’ as a coaching phrase. David Cutcliffe, who I worked for for 14 years of my career, was very big on us making one-word phrases in coaching. You know, it was back during the era of hurry-up offenses, and he wanted us to be able to coach on the run as opposed to giving dissetations. So, cheetah is a one-word phrase that means a lot of different things. And what it means is key-to-hip of the defender. You can use it in tackling, you can use it in coverage, you can use it in pursuit. When I got to Duke, I think we had won, the program had won maybe 10 games in eight years. I had two seniors in my room who had two 0-11 seasons. So I was trying to find something to give us a brand.
“Social media was just getting going. I mean, it was just Facebook back then. There was no Twitter, there was no TikTok, there was no Instagram. And so I wanted to give my group an identity. And so I came up with cheetahs. And the unique thing about it is, a pack of cheetahs is called a coalition. And a coalition is a group. So, you look at a (football) secondary. And when you think about it, cheetahs generally hunt alone, but when they do hunt, they will only hunt with their brothers. So that’s the unity piece of it. So I came up with that, started calling my group the coalition. Twitter came into play a couple of years later, and the rest is history. I became Coach Cheetah.”
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During his long career as an assistant coach, Jones worked with now-Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles for a handful of years at Duke. Jones worked with the Blue Devils’ secondary from 2008 to 2019 and was directly under Knowles during the 2010 to 2017 seasons.
“DJ is an elite recruiter, an elite motivator, an elite mentor and technician of the corner position, aside from just being a great person,” Knowles said of Jones in his opening press conference. “So he brings an energy to our staff that is really unmatched, just with the way his demeanor is every day. Really a high-energy guy, and that goes over to everything he does.”
Jones was part of Tennessee’s defensive staff overhaul this offseason after the firing of former defensive coordinator Tim Banks and multiple members of his staff. Knowles comes in as the defensive coordinator, with Jones as the cornerbacks coach, Jackson as the LEOs coach, and Anthony Poindexter as the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach.
Jones has coached several players to the NFL during his time as an assistant coach, including Jamison Crowder, Ross Cockrell, Kenyatta Lucas, and Michael Carter II.
