Everything Josh Heupel had to say about his offensive coaching hires at Tennessee
Josh Heupel was hired at Tennessee in large part due to the success of his offense and his ability to develop quarterbacks. As any Volunteer fan could tell you, those areas have been severely lacking in Knoxville in recent seasons.
Following a few weeks on the job, we now know the complete offensive coaching staff Heupel has assembled around him to help elevate Tennessee’s offense in his first year on the job.
Of the five offensive hires made by Heupel, three of them followed him from UCF, including offensive coordinator and tight ends coach, Alex Golesh.
“He has a great understanding of what we do offensively, the tempo that we want to play with, how to create mismatches, and does a great job of teaching the game to our guys, as well,” Heupel said of Golesh. “I think you look at his development of the tight ends through his tenure as a coach, he has developed some guys that have become all-conference players, a Mackey Award finalist, so looking forward to having him here and obviously our tight ends are, as well.”
Tennessee offensive line coach, Glen Elarbee, also followed Heupel from UCF. The two coaches have now been at three different schools together dating back to their time at Missouri.
“He was a part of turning around the offensive side of the football when we were at Missouri together, leading the league in offense our years there together,” Heupel said of Elarbee. “Went with me to UCF and is a phenomenal teacher of the game. You look at offensively what we’ve been able to do, the ability to protect the quarterback and the ability to run the football – I think all of our offenses were top 25 in rushing the last three years at UCF. He’s a guy that’s going to be great off the field, a tremendous recruiter and he’s a great technician.”
Joey Halzle, Tennessee’s new quarterbacks coach, played for Heupel at Oklahoma and has shared a QB room with the Vol head coach for 13 years.
“He played for me at Oklahoma, was in a room with a Heisman Trophy winner in Sam Bradford,” Heupel said of Halzle. “He’s been a part of high-level development of the quarterback position. Part of Landry Jones, who I think finished fourth in the history of college football in passing yards when he finished, the development of Drew Lock at Missouri, second-round draft pick. Look at what he’s done with Dillon Gabriel at UCF, who was leading the country in passing at one point this year. He understands the game, does a great job of teaching it, understands the fundamentals, understands the scheme and will do a great job of developing that position.”
Kodi Burns was hired by Heupel to be UCF’s new receivers coach this offseason before landing the head job at Tennessee, making this the second time Heupel hired Burns to be his receivers coach in a matter of weeks.
“He served in a co-coordinator title last year at Auburn,” Heupel said of Burns. “(He’s) played in this league, understands this league, has recruited it and done it at a really high level, and I’m excited about having him as a part of our staff.”
The only coach Heupel brings to Tennessee that he had no previous connection to is running backs coach, Jerry Mack. Mack left a coordinator position to serve as Tennessee’s new running backs coach.
“Look at his track record, he comes from Rice as an offensive coordinator, understanding the entire perspective on the offensive side of the football,” Heupel said of Mack. “He was a tremendous head coach. I think coach of the year honors maybe three times during his head coaching career. He gets it from a global perspective, just how to run a program and what we’re doing offensively.”
Here is Heupel’s complete press conference featuring his complete thoughts on each of Tennessee’s five offensive coaching hires.
Sorry Vol fans…but Heupel is just not impressive. Maybe some decade Tennessee football can return to the glory days of the 1990’s…I hope so.
Nah we’ll never be back. The administration isn’t serious about it. They want Tennessee to be an academic school. Tennessee is an agricultural school not Ivy League. They’ve been destroying the athletics since the late 90s. They absolutely hate the football program. That with the division of the fan base from the Majors and Fulmer era has insured that the program will never be anything other than a doormat. Maybe we can be the best tailgaters. Drink Up!
so vfl are which trolling teams fan are you? no vol fan could be that stupid.
Hate to tell you but VFL1974 is mostly right. The whole Johnny Majors sham caused alot of bad blood. UT was about to lose Fulmer to Clemson. Boosters and Admin ponied up and paid the man. Screwed Majors over, but that’s the name of the game I guess. Trouble is, UT admin doesn’t want to spend the cash to get a real coach for some reason. Look at how much they paid out to the last 3 clowns. This is a money business. You go throw $20 million at Saban to come to Tennessee, next day he would be in orange. Money game son. Makes the world go round they say.
afan dont know what you would expect him to say to be impressive but to be honest it doesnt matter. like pruitt he wont be judged by what he says (pruitt would have been fired after the first presser if that were the case) but by what his teams do on the field. Only time will tell but we obviously did not hire the first choice, or second, third… he will get us through sanctions and then either do well enough to hang on or be fired so we can hire a better coach. We are where we are.
Like I said we’re a doormat program. Every program has it’s down years but if it last to long like us it solidifies and you become the bottom you fell to.
fuzzy…What I mean is this. Any successful CEO in the business world or a head coach in football must have something called “presence”…when he speaks, people listen. I just felt that Pruitt was uneducated and had zero people skills. Heupel took 3 assistants from UCF and recycled a couple of ole Butch’s assistants. This reeks of not really knowing how to put together a top-flight staff. Fulmer did it & other “Successful” head coaches understand how to do it. Heupel does not know the turf he’s working in. Sorry but that’s how I view it.
Certainly Heupel was not the first choice, and he has not gotten his first choices for his staff, but considering everything going on with UT at this time, probably the best we can hope for. As with any new coaching staff, we just have to stay tuned and see what happens. It would be nice to buck our decade plus long trend of being somewhere between awful and abysmal.
My guess White was a safe hire for the admin. They knew he wouldn’t turn it down. Then White hires his coach at UCF because of the same thing. He knew he had to hire someone the first pitch. Tennessee can recruit, always has, always will. As long as he can coach, that’s the key. Make something out of nothing. Houston Nutt was one of the best at this. He came close to beating one if the best teams Tennessee ever had with 2 and 3 star players when Tennessee was the Bama of the 90’s.
Call me crazy but I’d take Gus and whover is on his staff over Heupel and this sorry band of no names and retreads. UCF must be high fiving about now.
I’m sure that’s what many clemson fans first thought about Dabo as well. Just a no name.
Dabo Swinney was given the opportunity to be “interim head coach” as he had an incredible amount of enthusiasm…plus he told the AD this…Pay me what you want to. I recall watching a play walking off the field with his head-down and Dabo made him walk back onto the middle of the field & hustle off with his head up. Although I do not care for datboi…He is a very good motivator & CEO of Clemson football.
OK, you are crazy. SEC East can’t be just about the Dawgs and Gators and be relevant. Kirby will be on the hot seat if he doesn’t win a championship in 2 years and then you can go hire Gus.
Makes sense, Clemson was going to steal Fulmer but after he won a Natty, No one wanted him. And please don’t trot out that tired false narrative about Fulmer not wanting to coach after Tennessee.
Rock Top may have hit Rocky Bottom! Last year we were 0-2 in the states of Georgia and Alabama and then we got worse during a pandemic AND we got caught paying players! Even worse, a lot of our fans sound like our worst rivals. Good News! It would be hard to worse. We have been retreading the same old orange tires for to many years. We can’t keep doing the same old things and get different results. I for one am glad to see that we cleaned house and stop trying to recapture the ghost of old teams and missing link LB’s of last century.