Vols Football: Butch Jones Told Us A Lot About Who He Is As A Person Today

Tennessee Vols head coach Butch Jones struggled to answer a question about UT’s defensive line positioning on Monday, but there might have been a reason.

You might not like the way he calls a game, but it’s hard to question the character of Tennessee Vols head coach Butch Jones.

On Monday, Jones had an opportunity to throw someone, anyone really, under the bus when he was asked about Tennessee’s odd defensive line positioning.

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, former Vols defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth has you covered.

Jones was asked about this on Monday at his weekly press conference and his answer was……..odd.

"Jones: I think everybody’s looking for it. We’re always a yard off the line of scrimmage, or hand behind the ball, not quite a yard. That’s something we continue to talk about and grow and develop. Again, we’ve seen some very non-traditional offenses in the first two games. You know, the amount of communication that was required last week, our players learned a lot about the ability to communicate and talk. You know, when you have to move the front and shift the front when it’s unbalanced and you’re trying to find the eligible receivers, you have to do it in a short period of time, it challenges your preparation and it’s challenges your communication. I thought that was big for us, that was good for us moving forward."

I immediately saw folks on Twitter accuse Jones of lying about how Tennessee lines up, with screen shots of games from 2015 and 2016 showing the Vols lined up on the line of scrimmage.

(I was one of those people.)

But I don’t think Jones was “lying”, I think he was just avoiding throwing any coaches, or players, under the bus. That’s not the type of guy he is. He’s not going to go in front of the media and disparage his assistant coaches, or his players. He’s never done that and he’s not going to start anytime soon.

Now, is this something that needs to be corrected? Yeah, obviously it does. And it should’ve been corrected before Tennessee played Indiana State. There really wasn’t a way Jones could’ve answered that question that would’ve been satisfactory. Though he did have to know the question was coming at some point.

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Jones basically said nothing by saying a lot. His response doesn’t really address why the Vols would line up that way. But regardless, he did a good job of deflecting any blame from his assistant coaches. I don’t care what you think of him as a coach, that’s an action from him that has to be viewed as a positive.