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Tennessee’s first-round Playoff exit at Ohio State showed the 1 Josh Heupel era knock
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Kirk Herbstreit estimated that there were 40,000 Tennessee fans in Ohio Stadium on Saturday night. Make of that what you will. That was an estimate, and even if he was off by 10,000 fans, it was clear that Vols fans did everything in their power to make it a “Tennessee takeover” in the first round of the 12-team Playoff.
By the middle of the first quarter, though, that was a distant memory.
The actual home team led by 3 touchdowns before Nico Iamaleava completed a pass. And while Iamaleava showed fight as the Vols’ skill-players dropped like flies, it was still a beatdown loss in enemy territory.
The 42-17 loss was a painful end to Tennessee’s season, and it was a painful continuation of the worst trend during the Josh Heupel era.
Tennessee takeover or non-Tennessee takeover, the Vols can’t seem to get over the hump in hostile atmospheres. In 4 years with Heupel, the Vols are now 8-10 in true road games.
Sure, even if Ohio State only had 60% of its fans in attendance by Herbstreit’s estimation, it was still a different kind of road game for the injury-riddled Vols. Receivers Dont’e Thornton and Squirrel White both left with injuries, and Dylan Sampson’s hamstring injury made him a complete non-factor. That was the real killer for Tennessee’s chance of making it a competitive game. Instead of turning to the SEC Offensive Player of the Year to carry the workload — he had 7 consecutive games with 100 rushing yards vs. SEC competition — he spent his whole night on the sideline while Iamaleava tried to do the heavy lifting.
It didn’t work. Nothing really worked. Even Jermod McCoy, who has been Tennessee’s best defensive player this year, lost key battles with Ohio State true freshman sensation Jeremiah Smith.
So no, the in-game odds weren’t likely that this was going to be Tennessee’s first true road win vs. an AP Top-10 team since 2006. A 7.5-point spread felt laughable by night’s end. Ohio State made Tennessee look like Akron playing an early-September game.
Vols fans can complain about the selection committee not giving them that home game the entire 5 1/2-hour drive back to Knoxville. The reality was Ohio State beat 2 Playoff teams while Tennessee beat 2 FBS teams with a winning record … and 1 of which was at home in overtime. That’s a problem, as was losing on the road to a 6-6 Arkansas team.
It’s troubling to think back to that Oklahoma game in September. You remember that. It was Heupel’s reunion in Norman. College GameDay was in the house for Oklahoma’s SEC debut. The Vols forced Jackson Arnold to the bench before halftime. Iamaleava made next-level throws in the first half. The Tennessee defense looked championship-level good. It was, by any stretch, the best road win of the Heupel era.
And then the Vols lost 3 of their next 4 road games with the lone win coming at Vanderbilt … where 40,000 Tennessee fans wasn’t even a possibility because the FirstBank Stadium construction limited capacity to 28,934.
Neither of Tennessee’s road wins were against teams that had winning records in the regular season. As it stands, Heupel has 3 true road wins against teams that finished in the AP Top 25. On the surface, that doesn’t sound like a true knock. But it’s bad when you realize that the last such victory came on Oct. 8, 2022 at eventual SEC West-champ LSU. That game aged like a fine wine. It was also before Jayden Daniels settled into the version of himself that took off in the latter half of that 2023 season and into 2024.
Since the Vols teed off on LSU in Death Valley that morning (it was an 11 am local-time start) in 2022, here are the true road game results:
- L, 27-13 at No. 1 Georgia (2022)
- L 63-38 at South Carolina (2022)
- W, 56-0 at Vanderbilt (2022)
- L, 29-16 at Florida (2023)
- L, 34-20 at No. 11 Alabama (2023)
- W, 33-27 at Kentucky (2023)
- L, 36-7 at No. 16 Mizzou (2023)
- W, 25-15 at No. 15 Oklahoma (2024)
- L, 19-14 at Arkansas (2024)
- L, 31-17 at No. 11 Georgia (2024)
- W, 36-23 at Vandy (2024)
- L, 42-17 at No. 6 Ohio State (2024)
Since that day when Tennessee walked off the field in Baton Rouge and looked like a true national title threat, it’s a 4-8 mark in true road games with 7 of those losses coming by at least 13 points. The lone loss in that group that was decided by single digits was against a 6-6 Arkansas team that lost starting quarterback Taylen Green to an injury. That stretch is even worse when you consider that half of those road victories came at in-state Vandy.
It’s a problem. There’s no way around it.
It’s on Heupel to fix it. Otherwise, Tennessee won’t move into that Tier 1 that it so desperately seeks.
As much as Heupel has done during his 4 years on Rocky Top — let’s not forget he ended the Alabama streak and also won 3 games vs. AP Top-10 teams after the Vols had a 15-year stretch without 1 such victory — that’ll follow him. Tennessee put him into the $9 million club to make trends like that a thing of the past.
Heupel deserves credit for putting the Jeremy Pruitt/Butch Jones/Derek Dooley days deep into the rearview mirror. He just capped a 3-year stretch in which he won 30 games. That’s the best 3-year mark at Tennessee since 1996-98.
But nothing about Saturday’s season-ending loss felt like ’98. Instead, it felt like more of the same.
Rocky Top might always be home sweet home for Tennessee. But if it’s ever going to feel like ’98 again, the road needs to feel like home.
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.
