It is a positive sign, in my opinion, if other teams are interested in your coaches. if makes two important assistants go in less than a week.
Josh Heupel had to deal with comparatively little coaching staff change in his first two seasons at Tennessee. After just one season on Rocky Top, Auburn graduate Kodi Burns accepted the same role with New Orleans, costing him his position as WR coach.
Then, following the 2022 campaign, veteran offensive coordinator and tight ends coach Alex Golesh, who was seen as a relatively fashionable name among the next generation of head coach prospects, accepted the position of head coach at USF.
However, in less than a week, Heupel doubled the number of coaches who had left for other positions when Jean-Mary rejoined the Big 10 to coach linebackers and coordinate the defensive run game under new UM head coach Sherrone Moore, and former Tennessee running backs coach Jerry Mack accepted a similar position with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
I won’t go into too much detail because we’ve already discussed the Mack news and its implications for recruiting and player development, but it’s undeniable that Tennessee lost two of its top assistants this week.
His corpus of work speaks for itself when it comes to Jean-Mary. Given that starting linebacker Jeremy Banks was involved in a highly publicised altercation with local police in 2019 and went on to record a team-high 128 total tackles, 11.5 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks, one interception, three pass breakups, and three quarterback hurries just 1-2 seasons later, the work he did during his first year on campus deserves plenty of credit in and of itself.
Mary had to deal with Texas transfer Juwan Mitchell, who was reported to be nothing but problems in the locker room, on top of managing Banks. After leaving UT, Mitchell transferred to Arizona State, and it appeared that his off-field problems trailed closely behind.
ASU reporter Chris Karpman of 247Sports outlined numerous issues with Mitchell’s demeanour that finally resulted in his termination from the club.
“We have spoken with Mitchell on several occasions regarding a number of incidents that occurred in the last few weeks that were related to tardiness or attitude issues,” said Karpman. Then, during practice on Saturday, there was an incident. Before practice was over, he left early. Essentially, the congregation said, “Hey, look, we’ve already stated that this is our standard and what we’re going to hold everyone to.” It doesn’t imply you are held to a different standard just because you were the best tackler at Texas before becoming a starting linebacker at Tennessee. As we work to create our culture, what message does it send to everyone else if we allow you to get away with using a different standard?
Mitchell was fired after just one week, so it wasn’t a lengthy process.
A three-star recruit out of high school who had been treated like an afterthought by the previous staff, Aaron Beasley was empowered by Mary in addition to handling a plethora of personalities that weren’t quite in line. Beasley started 11 of 13 games in Mary’s first season as the LB coach. He also placed second on the team in total tackles and QB hurries with six. He went on to become the most reliable linebacker for UT, accumulating 76 tackles in 2022 and 69 in 2023 along with six sacks and 24 TFLs overall.
