With spring practice nearing its conclusion, both coaches pointed to growing confidence, competition and cohesion within the group.
Poindexter, Tennessee’s co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach, emphasized how continuity within the staff has accelerated progress in his second year working with coordinator Jim Knowles.
“We’re much further ahead as a defense with the players, but as a staff as well,” Poindexter said. “We kind of know what Coach (Jim Knowles) wants, how he wants it to look… We’re light years ahead of where we were a year ago (at Penn State).”
That familiarity has led to improved execution on the back end, where a smart, competitive group of safeties continues to take ownership.
On the cornerback side, Jones has emphasized competition and unity, with both returners and newcomers pushing for roles.
“My mission coming in here was not to develop one or two players. It was to develop a unit,” Jones said. “You have to have multiple guys in your room that can play if you expect to win championships.”
The Vols return to the practice field Thursday before concluding the spring portion of the calendar with the Orange & White Game on Saturday, April 11, in Neyland Stadium. More information on the spring finale is available at UTSports.com.
Tennessee Football Press Conference | April 7, 2026
Co-Defensive Coordinator/Secondary Coach Anthony Poindexter
On the defensive installation this spring compared to last season at Penn State…
“We’re much further ahead as a defense with the players, but as a staff as well. We’ve all been with Coach (Jim Knowles) now, at least myself, (Andrew Jackson) and a couple other guys for two years. But you know, a couple of those guys have been with Coach (Jim Knowles) for a long time, so now we’re all cohesive. We kind of know what Coach (Jim Knowles) wants, how he wants it to look. We’re light years ahead of where we were a year ago.”
On what ways the defense is ‘light years’ ahead…
“I’m just saying, in order for the players to know the defense, the coaches need to know it well too. They can’t be learning while the player is learning. So right now, I just – myself, the guys that came with Coach Knowles, we know the defense, so we go to the meeting knowing the answer before he gives us the answer. Now, that just gives you more confidence as a coach when you’re coaching it to your player, when you know it inside and out, that now your delivery is just different. It’s just different.”
On his assessment of the safeties this spring…
“Just as a group overall, I’ve been totally impressed with the group of safeties. They’re all smart, they’re all football guys, they’ve all got toughness. But (Edrees Farooq) has had a great spring. He’s doing fantastic. You know, obviously (DeJuan Lane) knew the defense, but his growth of just being a year older is impressive. Dylan Lewis, he’s doing a great job. He’s really come along. TJ Metcalf, he wasn’t (previously) in the defense, he’s picked it up fast. (Sidney Walton, DJ Burks) and all those freshmen too. I have an impressive room, as far as attention to detail, wanting to come learn the defense every day and win the practice. These guys love to practice, they love the competition, so I’ve been impressed.”
On Coach Jim Knowles’ defense being described as a ‘safety-driven defense’…
“Our safeties have to make a lot of calls, so they have to be intelligent. Not only be a good football player talent-wise, but they have to be mentally sharp. Fortunately enough right now, these guys are pretty sharp. They’re pretty sharp. They’re on top of their stuff and like I said, they come in every day wanting to learn, so that makes it easy as a coach.”
On Edrees Farooq returning after bringing in several players from the portal…
“In this day and age, it’s hard. It speaks volumes to him, what he feels about this program and the staff that was here. He’s just a good character kid. You’re around him for five seconds, you know, like man, this is a good, high-character kid. He loves Tennessee, and it’s been impressive what he has done this spring.”
On his initial expectations for Sidney Walton and Dylan Lewis and how they have performed this spring…
“I come in with a clean slate. People try to tell you about a player, this, that and the other. Like I told them all when I met with them for the first time, ‘Y’all don’t know me, and I don’t really know you. I’m going to make my own impression of you. I’m not going to listen to somebody say, this is who this kid is. We’ll create our relationship, you’ll figure out who I am, and I’ll figure out who you are.’ I’ve been thoroughly impressed with all of them.”
On Jourdan Thomas’ impact on the program in his time at Tennessee…
“The first time we met, we gravitated because our stories are very similar. Same knee injury, I just didn’t hit the nerve. But the exact same injury, so when he heard my story and what I had to go through to get to this point, I think he started saying, ‘Man, my journey isn’t going to be as hard.’ I listen to him, and he’s a faith-driven kid, and you just listen to him. I have learned so much from him, just about being a good person and how he’s handling this whole situation. At least I was graduating, I didn’t have years left in college at least. He has years left in college, so now, you have to reprogram your brain to say, ‘Man, look, I can’t play this game anymore. What am I going to do? I want to be a part of it.’ So, it’s just been impressive being around him every day and trying to help him become a really good coach. He’s helping me become a better coach. He prays for me all the time, so that’s good. That’s good.”
On previously coaching a 6’4″ safety like Joel Wyatt and how his skillset translates to the back end of the secondary…
“I actually have. When I was at Connecticut, I had a six-foot four safety, 220 pounds, kind of reminds me of Joel Wyatt. I’ve been around this kind of guy. Most of the time when people see guys like this; they say ‘Oh, he has to be a linebacker.’ He’s not a linebacker, he’s a safety. He can move like one, he can run like one. He’s just young, he’s like all those young players. They have to learn the system, learn how we practice, learn how to be in college, but I’ve been impressed with him. I’ve been impressed with (KJ McClain), (Jowell Combay) and (Luke Thompson). They’re all doing a great job.”
On his chemistry with the other defensive assistant coaches, including Derek Jones…
“I’ve known (Derek Jones) for a long time. We’ve known each other 20 years, so it’s an easy fit with me and him. (William Inge), I’ve been knowing Inge for a long time. He and I met out at Purdue, had the same recruiting area, so we’ve been around each other quite a bit. Everybody knows the legendary coach (Rodney Garner). I met him when I was a baby coach. I was scared as hell of him. So I mean, I didn’t even know what to do when I saw him, because you just heard the stories, but I think we have a great room. All of our personalities are a little bit different, but it’s a good mix and I think we bring out the best in each other.”
Cornerbacks Coach Derek Jones
On how a new coaching voice and fresh start can help young players…
“I think anytime you take over a group, everyone sees it as a fresh start. I think anytime guys get a fresh start, they look at it as a standpoint to be able to write all their wrongs, to be able to do things, and to be able to more than anything, to get on a level playing field as far as competition is concerned. When you talk about guys like Tre Poteat, you come in your first year, you play, you’re not going to be as good as you’re going to eventually get to, and there is a huge learning curve in that first year. So I think for all of those young guys that were here last year, it was kind of that, a reset, a restart. Listening, but able to reflect back on what happened to them last year, knowing that they need to improve in that area and depending upon you to help them get there.”
On some of the traits that lead to the best college football corners…
“I think it’s different. Really, it has a lot to do with the scheme that you’re playing, and what you’re trying to get accomplished. If you are a primary man team, you have to have guys that can do that. That’s more speed, that’s more agility. A lot of times they can be a little bit smaller. But when you’re playing more zone schemes, bigger bodies, it really depends upon the type of receivers that you’re going to do. What I think you probably need to do is stack your room equivalent to what you’re going to face. Now with us having a defense that includes nickels, we’re going to have to have some of those smaller guys that can cover on the inside on the slots. We have several big body guys that are in the room, but I think for what we are doing schematically, ironically the room here at Tennessee fits what Jim Knowles likes to do.”
On his impressions of Ty Redmond motivating a player who has had early success…
“I have 27 years of experience doing it, and Ty is a very humble kid. He’s a guy that had a lot of success, but he doesn’t look at the season he had last year with any arrogance whatsoever. He’s eager to learn and hungry to get better, and he wants the knowledge and wisdom that I have been able to share with him over the course of my career. He’s a very, very smart football player. He’s a guy that naturally, being a little bit bigger, you have to iron some things out from a fundamental technique standpoint. You’re talking about, when a guy that comes in as a true freshman, he doesn’t get a lot of that training. It takes corners a while to get as good as they’re going to become, and I think he is relishing the fact of me harping on the details. I’m kind of old school in how I go about things. The drills that we are doing are showing up in practice, and I think he and the rest of the room are embracing that.”
On who is the vocal leader in the cornerback room…
“I don’t really have a guy in the room, and what you have to do as a coach and what you have to do as a leader, is you have to almost force them to step out of their comfort zone in that regard, and that is what we have been working on. I’m a guy that believes that a lot of the growth at any position comes in the meeting room, and we’ve had a lot of time to spend in the meeting room. We do a lot of exercises in our meeting room that not a lot of other people in college football do. That’s getting comfortable with one another, that’s being honest with one another, that’s pointing out those strengths and weaknesses of each other. I have them tell one another on how they can get better, because the only way that you’re going to be as good as you can be is to unify. In order to be unified, you have to care about each other, and in order to care about each other, you have to know each other. My first week here, my very first meeting, those kids in the room didn’t even have each other’s phone numbers, so we had a long way to go in that regard. It’s hard to be a vocal leader if you don’t even know the guys that you’re talking to, but every meeting that we’ve had, step-by-step, we’ve worked toward that. I think all of them are talking enough now. Some guys are going to lead by example, and if they are not vocal guys, you teach them that’s what they have to do. So, everything that they do has to be something that everybody else is looking at and saying, that is the way that you do it. (Ty Redmond) is a little bit quiet, but he does a really good job of picking the young guys up, and he is embracing that role.”
On what he expected out of the corners and nickels that came in from the portal…
“I didn’t know much about any of them at all, so it was kind of day-one page-one, just in the walkthroughs observing them, and once we were able to start practice, you can see a lot of the traits. What you have to do in our position is go back, look at film on guys and kind of get an idea of what to expect, but you don’t want to develop an opinion as a coach on a guy before you actually coach him. Because what you see on tape generally is a highlight film. You don’t know the situation, or you don’t know if a guy’s playing unmotivated because – there’s just so many uncontrollable factors. Guys transfer for a reason. A lot of times when guys are unhappy, a lot of times when guys think that their coaches are going to get fired, they’re not playing the way that they are going to play. But again, it’s like the first question that you asked, I think all of those guys in that room saw a clean slate, so I’ve been very, very pleased with where we are. Because my mission coming in here was not to develop one or two players. It was to develop a unit, because what I’ve found out in my career is that you have to have multiple guys in your room that can play if you expect to win championships. Because in order to win a championship at the college level, you have to play a lot of games. You have to play a lot of snaps, so if I only have two guys in my room that can help us win ball games, at some point they are going to taper off. So, you have to have other guys that throughout the course of the season, can get quality reps so that everybody gets to the finish line. I think collectively, we’ve got five guys in that room; the three guys that were here last year, the two guys that transferred, are in a really, really good competition right now to see who is going to rise to the top. But more than anything, trying to get five guys that no matter who we play, we give ourselves a chance to win.”
On his assessment of Kayin Lee…
“Kayin has played a lot of snaps in this league, has some individual success, but hasn’t had a lot of team success. And those things affect a lot of guys. I think he’s one of those guys who really wanted a fresh start, really wanted an opportunity to prove himself. And he works at it. You can tell by watching him in practice, in the meeting room, that he’s got a level of maturity to him. What we’re doing is a little bit different, so a lot of times you don’t feel it’s free. So he’s learning, but he’s been really impressive as far as helping to bring the young guys along. And one thing I would say about him, probably that stands out more than anything, is he’s an excellent teammate. And that’s what you want when you bring a guy into your room, into your program, into your locker room. A lot of times, you don’t know these guys, and you only have a small amount of time to recruit them in the portal. So, a lot of times it’s a roll of the dice in who you’re bringing in, and what you want to see when you have a guy that’s been at another program, especially a program that’s played against you and competed against you, you want to make sure that guy is the right type of person. And I think that’s the one thing that I can look at him and say, that kid is a captain, that kid is a leader, that kid is good for my room, and that kid is good for our program.”
On his coaching technique for the cornerback position…
“Cornerback is one of those positions where you really have to have a level of confidence that nobody else can relate to. Not many people who are criticizing are going to understand how hard it is to do what you do. Not many people who are criticizing you have ever done what you are doing, and what happens with you is seen by everybody. And it’s going to be criticized, scrutinized and talked about by everybody. You just have to know that. So, part of my job as their coach is to coach them on those aspects of things as well. The mental toughness piece and the confidence piece are just as important as any of the other basic fundamentals. And that’s what I was relating to when I talked about the different exercises that we have. Because what they also have to understand is you can’t harp on anything that happened in the past. Whether it was a series ago, whether it was a play ago or whether it was in the previous quarter, you have to be able to move on. And a lot of people can’t do that. People will still be talking about it, but you have to go. And on the flip side of it, the offense is trained that when they see you, where you’re frustrated, where you’re worried, where you are complaining, if you’re trying to explain yourself, they are going to come back at you. So you just have to have those guys prepared for that at all times. And whether you make a good play or a bad play, you have to move on to the next play. And it can’t be something that’s discussed, it can’t be something that’s talked about. You have to improve it, and you have to keep moving on. And that’s just a mindset and a mentality that every single young man in that room has to have. And those things have to be practiced. I’d be lying to you if I told you that’s natural for everybody who plays the position. But a big part of my job, and a big part of the guys in the room who have played, is to make sure everybody in that room understands, you can’t worry about how you look in the eyes of other people when you play cornerback. You just have to be able to make the next play for your team.
On reuniting with Jim Knowles this spring…
“It’s like riding a bike. Football is football, and when you have coached football for as long as I have, and when you’ve played football; it may be called something different and may be termed something different, but it’s still Cover 3. It’s still Man, it’s still Quarters, it’s still quarter-quarter-half, that part of it is not going to change. Coach Knowles and I were together for so long, it was really easy for me to go back into the room and pick up where things left off. Being able to finish his sentences, all of the sayings and the things that he does in a meeting, those things would develop when he and I were together at Duke. And at the end of the day, I think if you look at it, I’ve probably been with him longer than anybody else in that room when you look at the combined amount of years. He’s changed a lot of things because we all have to evolve, and I think the thing he and I both have learned is I have changed some things. When Coach Knowles and I were together at Duke, our recruiting pool was very, very small, and the amount of guys we were able to get was very small, especially when it came to defensive linemen and some of those other bodies that are very hard to get. So, we had to evolve our defense to how we could recruit, and we felt like we could recruit better defensive backs and smaller guys than we could the (big) people. So, our defense evolved towards being able to play a lot of man coverage, just trying to force quarterbacks to be really good, because we didn’t have the pass rush. And that’s how we became good. We had a lot of guys that benefited from that. When he went to Oklahoma State, he had a little bit different talent level than he had, so he evolved a little bit. A lot of the three-high safety stuff started to get popular, he adopted that. Naturally when he went to Ohio State, he had really good players at every position, and so he was able to do a lot of the things that he wanted to do, and not have to play so much man coverage. Because when you do that, there’s a lot of high risk in doing that. So, when you have all the pieces that fit together, you can be more schematic. And I think that’s exactly what you’re seeing here.”
