If you’re out on Josh Heupel, I’m out on you as a respectable football mind
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I get that loss No. 3 hits differently in the 12-team Playoff era. It hits a bit harder when it’s at home in a game in which you’re favored. It hits especially hard when it’s against a team that you beat the previous season, and it happens to be your head coach’s alma mater who fired him from his coordinator role a decade earlier even though he felt like a scapegoat for a disappointing season.
OK, maybe we got a little specific there. Josh Heupel‘s situation is specific. It needs context. Any sort of “he’s not the guy for Tennessee” reaction to Saturday night’s devastating loss to Oklahoma is lacking just that.
Let’s be clear. It was a frustrating loss. Losing that game — one in which Tennessee turned the ball over 3 times in a first half that it dominated but still trailed at the break — should sting. Tennessee has earned the right to have losses like that sting instead of just being happy that it played a competitive game against a ranked foe on a national stage.
Why has Tennessee earned that right, you ask? Heupel.
As in, the guy who just delivered the program’s best 3-year stretch in 20 years. Like, the guy who had the No. 1 scoring offense in America at the midway point of the season even though that unit had 4 new starting offensive lineman, it lost its 3 leading receivers, it replaced SEC Offensive Player of the Year Dylan Sampson and it had a post-spring transfer as QB1. He’s the guy who has coached in 47 consecutive games as an AP Top 25 team dating back to the 2022 season opener, and just lost his first game to a non-Georgia team at Neyland Stadium in over 4 years. Oh, and in that building, he’s the guy who finally ended the 15-year losing streak to Alabama-led Nick Saban and beat his successor en route to Tennessee’s first Playoff berth last year.
You know, that guy.
But hey, who needs context when we can just fire off takes like this one:
Here’s the problem with that take and the context it lacks. It ignores the part where Heupel took over for Jeremy Pruitt’s disaster and James Franklin took over for … Bill O’Brien’s rebuild after the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Yeah, nobody ever likes to bring that up with Franklin because O’Brien only spent 2 years in State College, where he held that program together and made it an attractive enough vacancy for someone like Franklin to take over. Scholarship limitations hampered Penn State in the first couple years of Franklin’s tenure — watching Penn State’s offensive line allow 10 sacks to Temple in the 2015 season opener did permanent psychological damage to Christian Hackenberg — but he worked through that.
Is that too much context? Let’s add some more. Franklin’s 4-21 record vs. AP Top 10 teams was his biggest knock, and the fact that his last such victory in a regular season game came in 2016 led to angst among that fanbase entering Year 12.
In Year 5, Heupel has 3 wins vs. AP Top 10 teams. A 3-7 mark vs. AP Top 10 teams still beats Franklin’s 2-11 mark in that stretch, which began well after he had already reestablished Penn State’s identity, but let’s not get lost in that side-by-side comp.
Want more context? Sure. In the 14 seasons prior to Heupel’s arrival on Rocky Top, Tennessee was 0-37 vs. AP Top 10 teams. Jeremy Pruitt (0-9), Butch Jones (0-13), Derek Dooley (0-8), Lane Kiffin (0-2) and Phillip Fulmer (0-5) all contributed to that horrendous stretch.
Do I need to get a billboard to make sure people remember that? Maybe a megaphone? Let’s put it in big, bold letters.
Tennessee was 0-37 vs. AP Top 10 teams in the 14 seasons prior to Heupel’s arrival on Rocky Top
Tennessee went from 2007-20 without beating a single team ranked inside the top 10 of the AP Poll, and yet there are people convinced that Heupel’s ceiling is too low. Never mind the fact that since Heupel took over, he’s tied for No. 6 among active coaches with 11 wins vs. AP Top 25 teams (4 of the guys ahead of him have reached the College Football Playoff National Championship Game in the last 3 seasons). Saturday night’s showing was a convenient time to go back to the well and dig up some early Heupel era narratives for why he won’t work at Tennessee.
I’ll take “his offensive style doesn’t care about complementary football” for 500, Alex.
Context? Let’s offer some up.
As Joel Klatt mentioned, Saturday night against Oklahoma was indeed a bad showing for complementary football. Really, this season has been bad for that, which is why the Vols are bottom 10 in the FBS in time of possession. It’s not a defense that can overcome those mistakes. To add some context that Klatt left out, though, there aren’t many defenses who look the part when their top 2 corners have played a combined 19 snaps. Preseason All-American Jermod McCoy has been out all year after tearing his ACL in an offseason workout in January while Rickey Gibson III has been out since he suffered an arm injury in the season opener.
Does that dismiss how bad its been for the No. 115 scoring defense in America? Nope. The missed tackles are a problem, and if you want to blame it all on an offense that operates too fast at times, fine.
But let’s add some context to Klatt’s claim that this is what Tennessee always is and why the defense limits that ceiling with the only defensive coordinator that Heupel has had through 5 seasons, Tim Banks, who would’ve left if his unit didn’t have a chance. The last 2 years, the defense did the heavy lifting for the Vols. They went 19-7 with 4 ranked wins thanks to a pair of top-25 units. We’re a year removed from the Vols having the No. 7 scoring defense in the nation with a group that was No. 5 in yards/play allowed. Sure, the Vols struggled to hold down Georgia and Ohio State, but they allowed 23 points per game against ranked foes and they finished the year with 3 wins when they scored 25 points or less.
That’s worth remembering because saying “they just want to score 50 points and by God everything else be damned” implies that Heupel refuses to adapt to his personnel. An offseason point of emphasis that’s been referenced on broadcasts was Tennessee expanding its route tree and not being as limited by those choice routes that Klatt referenced. If Heupel was someone who refused to adapt, we also wouldn’t have seen him tweak his entire offensive philosophy last year to have less of a downfield passing attack (Nico Iamaleava was No. 60 in the FBS in 20-yard pass attempts) and much more of a centrally focused rushing attack with Sampson. We saw that last year in the win at Oklahoma, wherein the Vols possessed the football for 35 minutes and ran the ball 52 times en route to a 25-15 road victory.
Speaking of the Tennessee running game, which Klatt called “nonexistent,” the 2025 Vols average 38 rushing attempts for 175 yards per game. That’s OK nationally, but it’s not a fair criticism of the Heupel offense as a whole, which has averaged at least 199 yards per game in each of his first 7 seasons as an FBS head coach, the most recent of which saw Sampson tote the rock 258 times (32 more than any SEC player). Sure, this unit could end with Heupel era lows in both rushing attempts and rushing yards per game, but the notion that Vols offense is nothing but “a token hand-off here or there” and deep shots lacks context, too.
Joey Aguilar is No. 5 in the FBS with a 61.7% adjusted completion percentage on throws 20 yards past the line of scrimmage, and he’s got 12 touchdown passes on those plays, which leads the FBS. He’s got 47 such attempts, which is high, but it’s No. 13 in the FBS. It’s hardly some outlier. Plus, Chris Brazzell II leads Power Conference receivers with 11 catches on passes 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and the 6-5 wideout is No. 5 among that group with a 64.7% reception percentage on those targets. Mike Matthews is tied for No. 3 among SEC receivers with 7 such grabs while Braylon Staley has 5.
Should the Vols just completely overhaul their downfield passing game even though they’ve proven to have the right personnel to operate that way? Klatt said in that appearance on “The Next Round” that there’s a model to success for the Vols to emulate.
Tennessee should try to be more like Ohio State, Klatt says
Yes, I agree. Tennessee should try to be more like the No. 1 team in America/defending champs, who happens to have the nation’s top defense and the nation’s top passing attack, which has arguably 2 of the 3 best receivers in the sport in Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate. If Ohio State is the standard that Tennessee is being held to, sure, I guess we can say Heupel’s team has a lower ceiling.
But there’s a good chance that for the second consecutive season, nobody plays up to Ohio State’s level. Tennessee couldn’t do it last year, which dropped Heupel’s road record to 8-10. That’s well documented. It’s why he’s not considered a Tier 1 coach. Perhaps it’ll be the thing that, like with Franklin’s struggles vs. top-10 teams, puts more pressure on him from the fanbase.
It’s still way too premature to assume that about Heupel when you have full context of the job he’s done in Knoxville.
It’d be great if Heupel had Tennessee in Atlanta every other year, or if he could end the losing streak to Georgia. He was a shanked kick from doing that this year, which meant the Vols would’ve had Playoff life heading into Week 11, but that context doesn’t matter when loss No. 3 hits.
Heupel gets credit for getting Tennessee annual Playoff expectations, regardless of what sort of roster turnover exists. He’ll be measured against his own standard moving forward. College football history suggests there’s a much greater chance that he’ll eventually wear out his welcome than get a statue. Shoot, Heupel learned that the hard way at his alma mater.
It is, however, too reactionary to say that loss No. 3 in 2025 should change long-term opinions about Heupel. If you’re now out on Heupel, you’re telling on yourself that you haven’t been paying attention.
Context be damned.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
