Former Tennessee quarterback Steve Matthews discusses building Concord Christian’s football program.
Former Tennessee quarterback Steve Matthews enters his first season as head coach at Concord Christian School in Farragut, Tennessee. Concord is fielding a varsity team in 2024 for the first time in seven seasons.
Matthews discussed becoming Concord’s head coach with Vols Wire.
“We have 37 (players) right now and we have 50 players in our middle school program,” Matthews said. “These kids are all working hard. We have most of our kids who haven’t even gone to high school yet, but we have some talented young guys and they all work hard.
“I’m excited. You have good days and bad days, and sometimes, it’s three steps up and one step back.”
The Lions have never won a varsity game and will compete in five contests in 2024.
“We have a full 10-game schedule,” Matthews said. “We’ll play five varsity games and five JV games.”
Concord Christian, a K-12 school with an enrollment of 200 students, is playing in 7-on-7 competition during the offseason.
“We’ve played well and we’ve played some bigger schools in 7-on-7,” Matthews said. “We beat Heritage and we tied Morristown East.”
Matthews is a native of Tullahoma, Tennessee and played quarterback for the Vols from 1990-91 before transferring to Memphis.
He was selected in the seventh-round of the 1994 NFL draft by Kansas City (No. 199 overall). Matthews also played for Jacksonville and Tennessee in the NFL.
Matthews served as Catholic’s head coach in Knoxville from 2013-2021. He guided the Fighting Irish to two state championships in 2015 and 2017.
Former Vol Steve Matthews hired as head coach at Concord Christian.
Former Vol quarterback Steve Matthews will serve as head coach at Concord Christian School in Farragut, Tennessee.
Concord Christian has not fielded a varsity football team since 2018.
Matthews is a native of Tullahoma, Tennessee and played quarterback for the Vols from 1990-91 before transferring to Memphis.
He was selected in the seventh-round during the 1994 NFL draft by Kansas City (No. 199 overall). Matthews also played for Jacksonville and Tennessee in the NFL.
Matthews served as Catholic’s head coach in Knoxville from 2013-2021. He guided the Fighting Irish to two state championships in 2015 and 2017.
Former Vol quarterback hired as Catholic’s offensive coordinator.
Former Vol Steve Matthews is returning to Catholic High School in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The former Tennessee and NFL quarterback was named offensive coordinator for the Fighting Irish.
Matthews served as Catholic’s head coach from 2013-2021. He guided the Fighting Irish to two state championships (2015, 2017) before resigning as head coach in April 2021.
Matthews compiled a 74-27 record during his tenure as Catholic’s head coach.
He is a native of Tullahoma, Tennessee, and played for the Vols from 1990-91 before transferring to Memphis where he set school passing records.
In Week 2 of the 1997 season, Tom Coughlin’s Jacksonville Jaguars beat up on the New York Giants, defeating them 40-13 at Alltel Stadium.
With the New York Giants facing off against the Jacksonville Jaguars this Sunday, there comes to mind the obvious connection between the two franchises — Tom Coughlin.
Coughlin was the initial head coach of the Jaguars when they entered the NFL as an expansion team in 1995. He coached there for eight seasons and to this day remains the only head coach to leave with a winning record.
With Jacksonville, Coughlin went to the postseason four times from 1996-99 and advanced to two AFC Championship Games.
In 2004, Coughlin, after a year off, was signed as the head coach of the New York Giants. We are all aware of his 12 seasons here and the two Super Bowl wins.
Coughlin faced the Giants just once as the Jaguars’ head coach, in Week 2 of the 1997 season. The Giants were in their first year under head coach Jim Fassel and came into Jacksonville with a 1-0 record. The Jags were also 1-0.
The Jaguars were going with backup quarterback Steve Matthews that day since their starter, Mark Brunell, was sidelined with torn knee ligaments — an injury sustained via Giants linebacker Jessie Armstead during the preseason.
The Giants scored first on a Tiki Barber four-yard touchdown run. The Jags came storming back with 23 unanswered points to take a 23-7 halftime lead.
The second half was all Jacksonville. They outscored the Giants 17-6 and walked away with their revenge in a 40-13 rout. The Giants were shredded for 252 yards in the air from Matthews, who was hustled into the game during the week after Brunell’s backup, Rob Johnson, injured his ankle.
“They brought me in here with one week of practice and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be our number two guy.’ That just doesn’t happen in the NFL,” said Matthews. “I wasn’t going to let them down.”
VFL Robert Ayers accepts coaching job at Knoxville Catholic.
KNOXVILLE — A former University of Tennessee football player is returning to Knoxville to be a high school coach.
Robert Ayers, who played for the Volunteers from 2005-08, has accepted a job as an assistant coach at Knoxville Catholic High School. He fills a vacancy for the Irish that was created when Kris White left the program to become the head coach at Moore County High School in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
White served as a co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach under head coach Steve Matthews.
Ayers, a Jersey City, New Jersey native, came to UT in 2004 as an outside linebacker. He redshirted and moved to defensive end in 2005 and was an All-Southeastern Conference standout in 2008.
Ayers, who attended high school in South Carolina, started as a senior for the Volunteers during his breakout senior season. He led the SEC with 15.5 tackles for a loss.
During the 2008 campaign, he also posted 49 tackles, three sacks, six quarterback pressures and an interception.
He was a first-round pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, the 18th overall pick, and was selected by the Denver Broncos.
Ayers played in Denver until 2013. He also played for the New York Giants (2014-15) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2016-17).
He signed a one-year deal with Detroit the following year and was released after just one day in training camp.
Ayers officially retired from the NFL in 2019 after recording 257 career tackles, 35 sacks, 14 pass deflections, eight forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries and one defensive touchdown.
Butch Jones’ impact of ‘new wave’ to install plays being implemented at Knoxville Catholic.
KNOXVILLE — A new wave of how to install plays is taking place at Alabama and will begin soon at Catholic High School in Knoxville.
The new wave consists of installing a play that is displayed on a jumbotron where players can watch it in real time at practice.
On the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days,” Catholic head coach Steve Matthews discussed how he intends to implement plays being installed with the help of the Fighting Irish’s jumbotron.
Photo by Dan Harralson, Vols Wire
Catholic’s jumbotron was donated by former Tennessee head coach Butch Jones and his family. Jones enters his third season as an analyst at Alabama in 2020.
“That was great by Butch and his family to get that scoreboard for us and jumbotron,” Matthews said. “He was watching us install and we were doing it the old-fashioned way of me lining everyone up. He called me over and said ‘Coach at Alabama, they install the play and then they put it up on the jumbotron where the guys can actually watch it’.
“These kids in this generation are visual learners. I am going to implement that this year because of the jumbotron he got us. I can talk about the play, install the play, then have my guys look at the screen and show it to them right on the field. He brought that up as one of the things Alabama does and I thought it was great.”
Photo by Dan Harralson, Vols Wire
“Tennessee Two-A-Days” is co-hosted by USA Academy head coach Rush Propst. Propst is also on board of the new wave of how to install plays in real time the way Alabama does.
“That is sort of the new wave in how to install,” Propst said of using a jumbotron to teach plays. “For me going forward, and having different ideas on how kids are in the 2020-21 campaign, how do they absorb the material and installs differently than they did five years ago.”
Propst won five state championships as the head coach at Hoover High School from 1999-2007. He had Jeremy Pruitt on staff from 2004-06. Propst then won two state championships and one national title at Colquitt County High School from 2008-18.
2019 was a season of reflection for Propst who was a defensive volunteer consultant at UAB. He plans to take many things that he has learned in the past year and implement them into his program going forward.
Propst discussed his time of reflection and learning in 2019 in comparison to Jones’ time at Alabama before he takes another head coaching position.
“Butch will land on his feet somewhere soon,” Propst said. “The good news for him, when you get fired, you can sit back and analyze your program and more of a slow mode because you have more time and no deadlines to meet. You are going around and you watch practices, study film, studying the way people are winning.
“I go back to the most impressive thing in my life was Eddie Robinson on the front row of a high school coach that was speaking and he was writing notes in a book. It was so impressive. I walked up to him and I said that you have been in this game a long time, what possibly could you have written down? He said you never stop learning in this game. So sitting out like Butch, and like I have done, and others have done, we always seem to come back stronger than we were when we left.”
Jones has also learned other elements of running a program during his time at Alabama that will help him going forward.
“He kept going on about how much that he had learned and is learning from Coach (Nick) Saban,” Matthews said of Jones. “He talked about the diet, the trainers, just how everything is done, and if he could do it again at Tennessee and everything that he could do different — and a lot of times it is just little things in the program. We talked about trainers, equipment managers, the strength coach and how they do things.”
Propst echoed Matthews discussing Jones evolving in preparation for his next head coaching position.
“It’s not just the X’s and O’s,” Propst said. “It’s how do we develop, how do we beat them better, how do we get them better medical care, how do we rehab differently, how do we practice differently, how do we install better.”
The entire interview with Matthews and Propst can be listened to here or below.
