Tennessee Football: New Strength Coach Already the Vols' Biggest Offseason Move

Tennessee football has a new strength coach in Rock Gullickson. Here’s why that hire was biggest offseason move for Butch Jones and the Volunteers.

As Butch Jones continues to search for a new Tennessee football offensive coordinator while simultaneously working to secure an elite recruiting class with National Signing Day less than a month away, the he has already made the biggest offseason move of the year.

And it was far and away the most important thing for the program.

The news that Tennessee hired Rock Gullickson as strength coach should address the biggest problem that kept the football program from reaching its goals this year: injuries.

This problem dates back to last year.

Their previous strength coach was Dave Lawson, who traveled with Jones from Central Michigan to Cincinnati to Tennessee. The relationship between the two soured at the end of last year.

And throughout this past offseason, Jones’s program operated with Associate Strength Coach Michael Szerszen handling the duties.

But with no director of the program, the Vols had problems early on. The offensive line injuries piled up before the season even started, and within the first three games, three top Tennessee football players suffered major injuries: Darrin Kirkland Jr., Cameron Sutton, and Jalen Reeves-Maybin.

Reeves-Maybin, the most important player on the unit, went down for the year, proving costly.

But the injuries didn’t stop there. The offensive line never got fully healthy, and eventually the Vols lost three defensive tackles to the year, all due to injury: Kahlil McKenzie, Shy Tuttle, and Danny O’Brien.

Of course, O’Brien was dismissed for another reason, but they reason may not have been revealed were it not for an injury.

The result of this was a decimated front seven down the stretch of the season. That’s why the defense struggled so much.

Jones clearly hired Gullickson to make sure that never happens again. And in Gullickson, he found the best guy for the job.

For 16 years, Gullickson was an NFL strength coach. He spent the past seven with the St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams.

Before that, he spent three years with the Green Bay Packers. And in 2007, he was the NFL Strength Coach of the Year.

That was the year that the Packers, who had constantly suffered injuries and missed the playoffs each of the previous two years, finally stayed fully healthy and made a run to the NFC Championship game.

Gullickson also spent six years with the New Orleans Saints before going to Green Bay.

But in addition to his accolades, which speak for itself with his 2007 award and his longevity, he also has college football experience.

From 1990 to 1999, he was a Division I strength coach at Rutgers, Texas, and then Louisville. And before that, he spent nine years in lower levels of college football. Eight years were at Montana State, and one was at South Dakota State. So Gullickson has lots necessary experience at every level and proved his worth.

Heck, his brilliance as a strength coach is proven by how he applies it to himself. Take a look at this.

Given the fact that too many injuries alone cost the Vols against the Texas A&M Aggies and the Vanderbilt Commodores, they needed to make this change. It also could have cost them against the South Carolina Gamecocks.

And it certainly made the Alabama game a bigger blowout than it otherwise would have been.

By going from no true strength director to one of the best and most experienced in the business, the Vols should take a huge leap forward.

It’s tough to think about what could have been if they had Gullickson last year, though. Given all the talent and experience they had, better conditioning could have been the difference.