That’s two key assistants gone in less than a week. I reckon it’s a good thing when other teams want your coaches, right?
In Josh Heupel’s first two seasons at Tennessee, he dealt with a reasonably minimal amount of turnover on his coaching staff. He lost WR coach Kodi Burns to the Saints when the Auburn grad accepted the same position with New Orleans after just one season on Rocky Top.
Then, after the 2022 season, long-time offensive coordinator/ tight-ends’ coach Alex Golesh accepted the Head Coaching job at USF after being somewhat of a trendy name among up-and-coming head coach possibilities.
But in less than a week, Heupel doubled the coaches who’ve left for other jobs when former Tennessee running backs’ coach Jerry Mack accepted the same role with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Jean-Mary returned to the Big 10 to be the defensive run game coordinator and coach linebackers with new UM Head Coach Sherrone Moore.
We’ve covered the Mack news and what it means for player development and recruiting, so I won’t go into much detail there, but there’s no doubt Tennessee lost two of its best assistants this week.
With Jean-Mary, his body of work speaks for itself. The work he did during his first year on campus deserves plenty of merit in its own right, considering starting linebacker Jeremy Banks was involved in quite the vulgar altercation with local police in 2019 and turned in a team-leading 128 total tackles, 11.5 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks along with one interception, three pass break ups and three quarterback hurries just 1-2 seasons later.
As if managing Banks wasn’t enough, Mary also dealt with Texas transfer Juwan Mitchell, who by all accounts was nothing but trouble in the locker room. Since Mitchell left UT, he went to Arizona State, where it seemed his off-the-field issues followed close behind.
Chris Karpman, who covers ASU for 247Sports, detailed a multitude of problems with Mitchell’s attitude that ultimately led to his dismissal from the team.
“There were several incidents that happened in the last couple of weeks related to tardiness or attitude issues with Mitchell that have been discussed with him on multiple occasions,” explained Karpman. “Then there was an incident at Saturday’s practice. He left prematurely before the end of practice. The congregation basically was like hey look, we’ve already expressed that this is our standard — this is what we’re going to hold everyone to. Just because you happen to have been a starting linebacker at Tennessee and at Texas was the top tackler prior to that, it doesn’t mean that you get covered by a different standard. If we let you get away with a different standard, what does that say to everybody else as we’re trying to establish our culture?”
His dismissal didn’t take long — Mitchell lasted just one week before getting the boot.
In addition to managing a multitude of personalities who didn’t quite have their priorities in order, Mary also managed to empower Aaron Beasley, who was a three-star recruit coming out of high school and had become an afterthought under the previous staff. In Mary’s first year as LB coach, Beasley started 11 of 13 games, finished second on the team in total tackles and ranked second on the team in QB hurries with six. He went on to be UT’s most consistent linebacker, racking up 76 tackles in 2022 and 69 in 2023 with a combined 24 TFLs and six sacks.
On the recruiting trail, it’s hard to find somebody as young as Mary with such an accomplished track record. I didn’t bother to go into his accolades at his other stops, but, man, he cleaned up at Michigan.
In 2022, he was credited as either the primary or secondary recruiter for 4-star EDGE Joshua Josephs, 3-star LB Kalib Perry, 3-star LB Elijah Herring (who projects as a starter this year) and 3-star DB Jack Luttrell, who has since transferred.
2023 seems to be when Mary really found his footing, signing several guys who look like they could be special players — like 4-star LB Arion Carter. 4-star EDGE Caleb Herring, 4-star TE Ethan Davis, 3-star LB Jeremiah Tealander and 3-star CB Christian Conyer all look like at the very least future contributors if not future big-time, SEC-level starters.
The Vols only took two linebackers in the ‘24 cycle, but Mary had his fingerprints on both of them. 4-star LB Jordan Burns and 4-star, instate product Edwin Spillman. It’s too early to say what will become of the duo, but Spillman looks like a college player already.
I don’t know what Heupel’s plans are or what his board looks like as far as replacements go, but he’s gonna be hard pressed to find somebody who can recruit nationally and develop the guys once they get one campus.
Fingers crossed for a nice, quiet couple of coaching searches — something the Vols could use given the timing of the departures.