Tennessee’s biggest preseason question isn’t centered on one player. ESPN’s preseason X-Factor list made that clear by pointing straight at Jim Knowles, the Vols’ new defensive coordinator, as the piece that could swing the 2026 season.
That choice says plenty about where Tennessee stands right now. The roster is loaded with new faces - transfers like Kayin Lee, Xavier Gilliam, Amare Campbell, and Cooper Ranvier, plus freshmen Faizon Brandon, TK Keys, Brayden Rouse, and TJ White.
In all, Tennessee has more than 50 new players on the team this year. But the biggest makeover happened on the sideline, not just on the field.
After a rough defensive year in 2025, Tennessee overhauled its staff. Knowles arrived from Penn State as defensive coordinator, Anthony Poindexter came in as co-defensive coordinator from Penn State, AJ Jackson joined as LEOs coach from Penn State, and Derek Jones was added from Virginia Tech to coach cornerbacks. The Vols also brought in strength coach Derek Owings from Indiana, and he has already made a massive impact.
ESPN’s David Hale framed Knowles as the Vols’ X-Factor with the kind of pressure that comes with a high-profile hire. “Two years ago, Knowles was coming off a national championship at Ohio State and was widely considered one of the most brilliant defensive minds in the game,” Hale wrote.
“Then he left amid much fanfare to Penn State and the wheels came off. The Nittany Lions’ D was still solid, but after a rough start to the year, James Franklin was fired as head coach and the whole season felt like a loss.
Now, Knowles is looking to rekindle some of that old fire at Tennessee, where the Vols allowed 2.7 points per drive in SEC play last season - worst in the league outside of woeful Arkansas. A turnaround feels likely, but how much of Knowles’ complex system can he make work in Year 1?
Coming off the missteps at Penn State, the pressure is on - for both Knowles and Tennessee.”
For Tennessee, the logic is obvious. Even if the quarterback battle ends up involving George MacIntyre or Faizon Brandon, the offense still has Josh Heupel’s track record working in its favor.
The defense, though, has been reshaped at every level, from personnel to coaching. That makes Knowles the face of the whole operation.
His résumé is not in question. Before Penn State, Knowles built elite defenses at Ohio State and helped the Buckeyes win a national title. He also had strong runs as defensive coordinator at Oklahoma State and Duke after a six-year stretch as Cornell’s head coach.
Now the challenge is different: installing a new system and new terminology in Knoxville before the 2026 season. Knowles has brought several players and assistants from Penn State with him to help speed up that process.
“We do try to throw a lot at them early,” Knowles said after taking the job. “It’s a whole philosophy.
You know, kind of start out, throw a lot at them, see what they can take, shrink it down. Once you figure out their strengths and weaknesses and how they learn, it’s really important how they learn.
And then hopefully build it back up to whole on the other end. But how you get to the other end is really based on the players and how they pick it up.”
There’s been a belief around Knowles that his defenses can take time to absorb, and that the system doesn’t always click right away. Tennessee linebacker Arion Carter pushed back on the idea that such concerns automatically fit this group.
“If he’s putting in certain packages that are too complex, per se, to keep it simple and let us be reactive and not be apprehensive about whatever’s going on that’s in front of us to hesitate, he’s not going to put it in,” Carter said of Knowles, via Brooks Austin’s show on YouTube. “So everything that we’ve done to this point, we’ve been able to grasp it, and we’ve been able to build and master on top of that.”
Carter also pointed to the experience Tennessee has on hand.
“Especially me being an older guy, and we have an older guy at every position,” Carter said. “So we’ve all played a good amount of football, at least two to three years, at least.
You know what I’m saying? So when you have that, with a genius mind like (Knowles), you know, you can run exotic blitz packages.
You can show different types of shells and coverages that you may not be able to do with an incoming freshman or sophomore who’s never really played a lot of football.”
Tennessee was one of only four teams in ESPN’s preseason Top 25 to have a coach listed as the X-Factor. The others were Texas with DC Will Muschamp, Alabama with OL coach Adrian Klemm, and Southern Cal with DC Gary Patterson.
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For the Vols, the timing matters as much as the talent. Tennessee has no commitments yet in the 2028 class, but it is clearly working to build early relationships, and having a target like Thomas in Knoxville only strengthens that effort. Being able to evaluate him up close, around a familiar setting, could give the staff a better read as the recruitment develops. [Read more 🡒]