There’s a couple unordinary connections between Tennessee and Alabama’s coaching staffs entering Saturday afternoon’s rivalry showdown at Neyland Stadium.
For six years with with Derek Dooley and Jeremy Pruitt leading Tennessee’s program, there was a clear connection with the Vols’ head coach having worked for Alabama’s Nick Saban. But now with Nick Saban retired and Kalen DeBoer leading the Alabama program, there’s two new connections between the programs and while they’re less noticeable, they’re more intriguing.
The most relevant to the on field battle is that Tennessee inside linebackers coach William Inge worked for DeBoer for the last four seasons, the first two at Fresno State and the next two at Washington. Inge was even headed to Alabama this offseason, briefly accepting the job to be the new Crimson Tide outside linebackers coach before Josh Heupel hired him away to coach the Vols’ inside linebackers.
That is seemingly an advantage for Tennessee this week because Inge coached against DeBoer’s offense in practice every day for our years. But Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks thinks that the advantage could be overblown.
“Probably (overblown) a little bit,” Banks said. “You’re not going go out there and make no tackles or interceptions. Obviously he’s familiar with Coach (DeBoer). But at the end of the day, our guys got to go out there and execute. We’ve talked a little bit about it, but he doesn’t have any more than what we can see on tape, if that makes sense. So it’s great having him. He’s done a tremendous job for us this season. And this game will be no different for him.”
Inge could provide some extra insights on Alabama’s offense but he also isn’t Tennessee’s defensive play caller. And like Banks said, the Vols can pick up on tendencies and schemes by watching film.
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The bigger challenge for Inge this weekend is preparing his unit to face an explosive Alabama offense without its veteran leader Keenan Pili. The super senior linebacker tore his ACL last week in Tennessee’s win over Florida. With Pili out, sophomore Jeremiah Telander stepped up into a much bigger role while Jalen Smith and Kalib Perry each played more as well.
The second connection between the two programs is the head coaches. Both DeBoer and Heupel are from South Dakota and have known each other for decades because of their shared home state.
“Kalen, not a lot of us from us from South Dakota,” Heupel said earlier this week. “But anyways, knew of him when I was younger. And through his coaching career, he was just somebody that I stayed in contact with at times. Got great respect for him and what he’s done throughout his career and how he handles himself.”
Kickoff between Tennessee and Alabama is at 3:30 p.m. ET at Neyland Stadium. Sean McDonough, Greg McElroy and Molly McGrath are on the call for ABC.
