University of Tennessee Athletics
DeBord's Fit Everything For Vol Offense
August 06, 2015 | Football
Aug. 6, 2015
By Brian Rice
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
UTSports.com
When asked to describe Offensive Coordinator Mike DeBord in three words, Zach Azzanni did not miss a beat in giving those three.
DeBord took over as Tennessee's offensive coordinator in January, the only staff change among full-time coaches in Butch Jones' three years at UT. He brought with him a resume that included two coordinator stints at Michigan, stops in the NFL and a head coaching position at Central Michigan where he worked with a young Jones as his offensive coordinator.
"I don't consider him working for me," Jones said. "It's all of us working together in a group. He knows me and he's also sat in the chair as a head coach. He's had the opportunity to learn from some of the NFL greats in Mike Holmgren and Mike Martz and he's been around the game."
That relationship proved key when Jones needed to fill that first opening on his staff, and it is paying dividends already.
"I've always thought Tennessee was a great school, a great athletic program," DeBord said. "It was a great draw because of Butch Jones and my great relationship with a lot of coaches on the staff."
With the rest of his staff intact, the "fit" of the new coordinator was perhaps as important as the X's and O's on the field. DeBord was exactly the mold Jones was searching for.
"I've had a tremendous amount of respect for him for a very long time," Jones said. "I wasn't alone, that was our staff as well. We had a profile for our offensive coordinator, just like we do in recruiting. We wanted someone that could command a room, that could command our players and our staff. He's been able to do that and brought a whole another element of experience."
He took over an offense that built momentum as the 2014 season rolled on, culminating with a 45-point performance in the TaxSlayer Bowl win over Iowa. DeBord's job was to keep that momentum and the tempo that helped build it rolling to be even better in 2015.
"There has been a good job of improvement over Coach Jones' first two years, but we still have to improve things," DeBord said. "We have to play faster, we have execute better, execute better on third down, execute better in our style of play."
In running the same up-tempo system that Jones ran under DeBord at Central Michigan, the transition was seamless. The system, the playbook and the terminology remained the same for the players and the voices teaching spoke the same football language.
"He knows exactly what Coach Jones expects and the messaging and how we do things here," said Azzanni, Tennessee's passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach. "That's the most important thing, anytime you're hiring someone to your staff, they have to understand your plan and buy in to what you're doing and that was Coach DeBord 100 percent."
It was a reversal of roles for Jones and DeBord, but the familiarity made that relationship work from the start.
"He can see the big picture. He understands the inner-workings of all the position groups. It's the way he can see the fundamentals and get the problems corrected and really see the problems before they happen."
The relationship between Jones and DeBord set the tone for the relationship the entire staff has built among one another.
"There's no egos on this staff," Azzanni said. "Everyone has the same goals and that's to go win and do things the right way."
