Friday, October 11, 2024

Tennessee embraces Josh Heupel’s quiet stability as Vols enter season among dark horse playoff contenders

Tennessee embraces Josh Heupel’s quiet stability as Vols enter season among dark horse playoff contenders

DALLAS — Josh Heupel isn’t one for showmanship or hype. Instead of his highly-touted quarterback Nico Iamaleava and potential No. 1 DE James Pearce, the Tennessee coach brought a senior offensive lineman and linebacker to SEC Media Days. 

Entering his fourth season, perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay to Heupel is that he’s made Tennessee… boring? 

“When I took this job three years ago, everybody can go back and kind of research what we were embarked on as far as challenges and how we had to navigate those,” Heupel said. “We’re at the point now where we’re almost free and clear of navigating all those things. Our roster is the deepest that it’s been by far.” 

With years of calm, it’s easy to forget the decade of turmoil Tennessee football once endured. The program fired previous coach Jeremy Pruitt amid alleged Level I NCAA violations. Numerous coaches turned the Vols job down after they fired Pruitt’s predecessor Butch Jones. Lane Kiffin abandoned the program after one year. Those messes ended not only with new football coaches but with new athletic directors, too. 

Heupel was seen by many as a bridge coach after joining his UCF athletic director Danny White in the move to Tennessee. Already, he’s well overperformed expectations. In 2022, the Vols beat Alabama and won 11 games. Perhaps most impressive, he followed it up with another nine-win campaign, giving Tennessee its most consistent two-year run since 2004. 

It comes through in interviews that Heupel is a quiet guy. He has seen the highs and lows of college football, from quarterbacking Oklahoma‘s 2000 championship team to getting run off from his alma mater as an offensive coordinator in 2014. But more than anything, that calm consistency stands out to his players. 

“When you have someone like Coach Heup who’s very consistent in what he does and is very consistent every day, it gives you no option but to be consistent as a team,” defensive lineman Omari Thomas said. “He’s just chill, goofy almost. He’s real laid back. What you see is what you get.” 

That consistency has lifted Tennessee back into the national spotlight. Last year, the Vols landed No. 2 overall recruit Iamaleava to headline a top 10 national high school class. This year, Heupel convinced multiple players –– like linebacker Keenan Pili, who suffered a season-ending injury last year –- to return and lead the next great Tennessee team. 

“People want to play for him,” linebacker Keenan Pili said. “He’s built those relationships with the coaches in a way that they’re willing to sacrifice their own personal wants and desires for a team goal.”

Tennessee enters the 2024 season as a dark horse contender to compete for the expanded College Football Playoff. The Volunteers are well within the CBS Sports Blue Chip Ratio needed to compete for a national championship. That was once framed as a downfall for Heupel, who had not fared well in the SEC recruiting footprint before landing in Knoxville. But perhaps most importantly, his quiet calm sets the tone for a unique generation of Tennessee player leadership who want to take the program to new heights. 

“The biggest thing is that he wouldn’t ask you to do anything that he wouldn’t do,” offensive lineman Cooper Mays said. “When your players see that, they’ll fight hard for you. He’s done a great job of doing things the right way.”

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