For the past five seasons, Tennessee running backs had a former running back, Robert Gillespie, as their position coach. But when the dust settled on Tennessee’s staff under new head coach Jeremy Pruitt, Chris Weinke was assigned the role of running backs coach.

Weinke has been a coach since 2010, but the 2018 season will be his first focusing on the running back position. At Florida State, Weinke played quarterback and won the Heisman Trophy. After being the head coach of IMG Academy 2010-14, Weinke made the jump to the NFL to coach his college position. In 2017, Weinke served as an offensive analyst at Alabama.

Pruitt, meanwhile, isn’t worried that Weinke will have any trouble adjusting to coaching a new position. In fact, the new head coach recently explained to GoVols247’s Patrick Brown why he thinks UT running backs will benefit from being coached by a quarterback.

“To me, a guy that’s a football coach is a football coach,” Pruitt told Brown. “I think a running back has to look at the game through the eyes of a quarterback. One of the first things that happens, what keeps all the great young running backs from playing? Protection.

“He’s got to see it the same way the quarterback sees it, because the quarterback’s going to be changing protections and things like that. Most of the time those great runners, you just make sure they know what time the bus is going to leave. But they’ve got to know how to protect. I think it’s going to be good for our guys to have a guy like Chris, who has done that and done it at the highest level, to be in the room with them.”