Georgia fans should be aware of Tennessee's reported big DC hire but not afraid of it

The best defensive coordinator in the country last year is on the move once again. With the way the coaching carousel has turned, it left Jim Knowles without a job in Happy Valley. The former standout defensive coordinator of the Ohio State Buckeyes did not have anywhere near the same amount of success with the Penn State Nittany Lions. All signs point to him linking up with the Tennessee Vols.

ESPN's Pete Thamel was one of the many reporters who were in on the news of Knowles in the process of negotiating his buyout with Penn State, and possibly looking to come to Tennessee. He would be replacing the ineffective Tim Banks, who too was a rockstar defensive coordinator only a year ago. Oh, how the times have changed... As far as Georgia is concerned, this is not a huge deal.

While reported hire does improve the Tennessee defense, the biggest issue is still prevalent there...

For as long as Josh Heupel remains the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, there will always be limitations at play, based on the gimmicky nature of his Air Raid offshoot offense. It does not punish the opposing defense, meaning they will always be able to get after the passer late in games if they need to. Knowles' defense could be better than Banks', but there is a price linking up to with Air Raid.

Let's now unpack this a bit further on what this could mean for Georgia in the grand scheme of things.

Jim Knowles to Tennessee should have Georgia fans' undivided attention

To date, Heupel has never beaten Georgia. While this annual rivalry will not be protected as part of the SEC adopting a 3-6 scheduling model moving forward, it will be at least a while before Kirby Smart even thinks about losing to the Volunteers again. Tennessee is not on the Georgia schedule for next year, but the Vols will be on it twice from 2027 to 2029. Will Knowles still even be in Knoxville by then?

That remains to be seen. What this means for Georgia is the Dawgs could be negatively impacted in recruiting on the defensive side of things. Knowles has worked well at two of his recent stops in Ohio State and Oklahoma State. While the Buckeyes have carried on just fine with Matt Patricia calling the shots on defense, Oklahoma State has become a dumpster fire of a program after Knowles' exodus.

So to tie a bow on this, Tennessee's reported addition of Knowles could conceivably raise this team's ceiling ever so slightly. In short, he could be the missing piece to get them back into the playoff in short order. That being said, once they get there, the Vols are likely to come up empty-handed because any team worth its weight in salt defensively is going to slow it down, like Knowles in 2024...

In the end, we should give Tennessee credit for attacking one of its handful of constraints ferociously by hiring the coordinator incoming Penn State head coach Matt Campbell did not want in Knowles. However, Tennessee hiring Knowles is not addressing the bottleneck, which is the gimmicky Air Raid. Does Georgia have a bottleneck? All teams do, but theirs is not as painfully as what Tennessee has.

For now, Georgia must respect Tennessee's reportedly savvy hiring of Knowles but not be in awe of it.