Alex Golesh reveals how he is adjusting, evolving Tennessee offense
Tennessee offensive coordinator Alex Golesh made an immediate impact on the Volunteers offense last year in his first season, setting eight new school records in points, total offensive yards, touchdowns, point after touchdowns made, total first downs, rushing first downs, fewest interceptions thrown and passing efficiency. With their fast paced offensive attack being a staple of their team, Golesh was asked if opponents now knowing their offsesive style and tendencies will change things for the offense heading into this season.
“Changes a lot for you, you’ve got to anticipate answers to people’s answers. I think a lot of the time the first time you play a team, if you’re reffering specifically to the tempo, just like you saw a year ago teams settle in, players settle in. I think it’s really hard to replicate in practice so people tend to settle in, you get to the secon, third quarter people are used to it. Play callers on the other side of the ball figure out what they can and can’t get in at the tempo. So you’ve got to have answers, for us that’s a multitude of different things, I don’t necessarily want to share it, but we have answers to recplicate temop, answers to how they answer it,” Golesh said.
Tennessee’s offensive tempo definitely gave defenses headaches last season, as they averaged a nation leading 2.99 plays per minute. But this offseason Golesh has been focusing on keeping his offense ready for team’s different approaches to defending them, as well as evolving the offense.
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“In a lot of ways that’s what I spent all spring doing is, man we hurt them here they’re gonna take that away, what’s the next counter punch to that. But there was no secret coming in a year ago we came from a place, the system from a tempo stant point, from a spacing stadnpoint similar we’ve grown and evolved in a lot of ways,” Golesh said. “You saw us a year ago as the year went we’d grown and evolved in terms of how we get the ball out, formationally we’ve expanded, we’ve got to continue to expand formationally. Whether it’s motions or disguising pictures offensively, we’ve continued to grow. We’re drastically different today than we were two years ago leaving the previous place, we’re drastically different today than we were leaving the bowl game in Nashville in terms of what we are, what we have, personnel wise we’re different.”
The Volunteers offense brings back a solid ammount of their production from last season, including star quarterback Hendon Hooker. And if Golesh continues to evolve that unit and add different wrinkles to their game, then they may be even more dangerous to SEC defenses this season than they were last year.
“So we’ve had to grow and evolve too and like I said, you spend a lot of the offseason looking for answers, where we got hurt and where we hurt people knowing that there’s gonna be answers to that so I think you have to continue to evolve offensively. I don’t know that we’re going to line up in the Pro-I play one, that was a joke, but we certainly have to continue to evolve and look different,” Golesh said.