Vols RB Coach Jerry Mack Reflects on Decision to Come to Tennessee

Vols RB Coach Jerry Mack Reflects on Decision to Come to Tennessee

Jerry Mack has soared through the college football ranks as an assistant coach, and he now returns back to the state of Tennessee to work for Josh Heupel at the University of Tennessee as the running backs coach. Below is what Tennessee’s most underrated hire, in my opinion, had to say about coming to Knoxville.

It was a strange situation," Mack said on Wednesday during his first media availability as Tennessee's running backs coach. "Coach (Heupel) gave me a call, probably at the beginning of a couple of weeks ago, and he was looking for a person with a diverse background, and my background has been in a pro-style system. It's been in a spread system, and then, also, great ties to the state recruiting — and not just the state recruiting. Also, just the Southeast and part of the United States recruiting. That's where a lot of my connections and a lot of my relationships are built, so I think it was just a perfect fit."

Mack played high school ball at Whitehaven in Memphis and later returned to coach receivers at Memphis on his meteoric rise through the college coaching ranks. Yet, he had no previous relationship with Heupel's staff along the way. It did not take long for him to vet out the new staff in Knoxville, though.

"We're in a different world right now, with the Zoom sessions and doing interviews through Zoom. "I had a chance to call around. This is a big business, but it's a small business when you really get down to the nuts and bolts, because a lot of guys have worked together or had relationships built with other people that you know. So to get a chance to talk to some of my colleagues in the profession, and just getting a chance to hear about Coach Heupel and the staff, and Coach Golesh, and just how great they were to work with. They're family men, the type of men that you want to be associated with, the type of men that you want to be involved with, and that really kind of weighed my decision," Mack said on the process.

He concluded, "obviously, the opportunity to come to the SEC and work at the University of Tennessee, me being from the state of Tennessee, I also knew what kind of program this was, but when you get a chance in this profession to work with the people — because it's all about the people in the building, when it's all said and done. I think the people in the building are what's really important, and that's one thing that kind of swayed my weight to head this way."

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