This past Saturday, Tennessee football took to the field at Neyland Stadium for the annual Orange and White Game. This also marked the first public appearance of the Vols’ new defense under Jim Knowles.
While the scrimmage doesn’t give us an exact look at Knowles’ scheme, it did give us another idea of what it will look like. It also showed us how Tennessee’s personnel are handling the adjustment.
As far as returning senior linebacker Jeremiah Telander, he loves the change. With so much emphasis placed on linebackers to make everything right, he relishes the opportunity.
“The linebackers run the show,” Telander said. “That’s what I love as a Mike linebacker. We have the ability to check in or check out of things. We have a lot of smart guys in this room so it really frees up Coach Knowles and lets him do what he wants to do on the field. So I’m loving it and it’s driven by linebackers.”
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Overall, Telander is pleased with how the defense has adjusted to the change. There’s still a long way to go until the team takes the field against Furman to open the season, but at this point in the off-season, it’s about where it should be.
There is, of course, room to improve, though. Telander said as long as they aren’t repeating mistakes and are a ‘team on the rise’, then he’s confident.
“I’m really excited about how it came out,” Telander said. “And it’s really been 15 weeks of it now cause we’ve been working on it since January. We’ve definitely gotten better every single day and that was the goal. That’s what Coach Knowles preaches all the time, be a team on the rise. So at first, if there’s some mistakes here and there, you got to clean them up and you cannot make the same mistake twice. I feel very confident in our defense that we did that.”
Telander is in a fight for snaps in a loaded linebacker room. Other notable returners include Arion Carter, Edwin Spillman, Jadon Perlotte, Jaedon Harmon and Jordan Burns. Incoming players include Penn State transfer Amare Campbell and highly-recruited freshmen Brayden Rouse and TJ White.
