Each week during the football season, former Tennessee assistant coach Doug Mathews joins us to share his thoughts on the Vols. Join The Coach each Saturday morning at 9 a.m. EST for a Big Orange-slanted look at the day's action on Forklift Systems Football Saturday, and again each Sunday morning at 9 a.m. E.S.T. for Big Orange Sunday, presented by Superior Seed & Supply on WGFX FM, 104.5 in Nashville, for a look each week at the state of Tennessee football, what just happened, and what lies ahead.

First off coach, while the situation isn't exactly the same, there sure are some similarities between what seems to be happening right now and that bizarre 1988 season when you went from being an offensive assistant to defensive coordinator after Washington State put 50+ on the board in a win over Tennessee. There hasn't been that kind of dramatic shift on the staff, but it seems pretty clear that coach Dooley is changing some of the staff dynamics on the defensive side after a pretty disastrous day against Troy. How much can you really shake things up at this stage and expect different results?

The obvious difference between the situations is that hen coach Majors did it after the Washington State game in 1988 it was clear and clean break. I moved over and had the authority to make whatever changes I wanted. Coach Dooley hasn't done anything that extreme.

I don't know exactly what changes he's making, but the bottom line is that the defensive coordinator is going to be the same.

Another difference is that we did it going into an open week and we completely changed things around, went from a 3-4 front to a 4-3 front and went and played Alabama. We made a complete break and went in a totally different direction.

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