Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks on growth that must occur coming out of loss
Tennessee’s defense in the first half Saturday night in the loss to Florida has created plenty of angst among the fanbase and has left plenty of work to be done for Tim Banks’ squad.
The Vols missed a dozen tackles. They struggled against the run, the underneath passing game and they couldn’t get off the field on third down in the first half that saw Florida score 26 straight points en route to the win.
“Schematically, they did a good job trying to have some misdirections, to try to hold the linebacker’s eyes, the safety’s eye,” Banks said of Florida’s success running the football. “But I’ll be honest, they didn’t do anything that we hadn’t necessarily practiced for and they hadn’t done anything that for the most part we’re gonna continue to see week in and out in this league. So for us to go where we want to go, we’re going to have to all collectively, from the front to the backers to the secondary, we all have to tackle better.”
As for the tackling issues, Banks said it’s back to work with fundamentals and techniques. The Vols missed tackles at all levels Saturday night, but in particular the secondary struggled mightily tackling in open space as they missed 11 tackles.
It’s clearly an area that has to be fixed yesterday.
“We’re gonna practice tackling whether we tackled at a 100 percent clip or obviously a night like we had Saturday night. We’re gonna always try to emphasize tackling, but what kind of tackles showed up? We obviously had some open-field miss tackles that we need to be get addressed, so we try to put them in those game-like situations best we can. Obviously, we’re not taking guys to the ground (in practice), but as far as our footwork goes, our pad level, where our eyes are, we try to make sure we’re emphasizing those particular tactics.”
As for the short passing game, Banks knows more of that is coming. Tennessee has shown an ability to rush the passer off the edge and for two years he’s been a pretty blitz happy play caller. A season ago, South Carolina really worked Tennessee in the short stuff as did Georgia.
“Yeah they did a good job getting him on the move a little bit with some of their boot games and perimeter game, perimeter kick outs. And obviously, ball in hand, we gotta do a better job of tackling guys and getting them on the ground. But we think we have a pretty good pass rush. We think a lot of teams will try to get the ball out as quickly as they can. But yeah, (Graham Mertz) was pretty effective that night, getting the ball away as quickly as you can.”
Tennessee will likely see a lot of quick game this week as well. UTSA the last two weeks have throw the ball beyond 10 yards 18 times and they have thrown it less than 10 yards 39 times. Tennessee is going to have to be better defending the pass closer to the line of scrimmage.
That short controlled passing game is also why third down stops are so crucial. Tennessee had their chances having Florida in third and medium or long multiple times in the first half and simply couldn’t get off the field.
“He (Mertz) was able to get outside of the pocket where we don’t keep a contain on it. We don’t match things on the back end, give up two routes on the sideline when we’re sitting in a hard corner. We should be all over that,” head coach Josh Heupel said of the third down defense.
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