There’s growing excitement on Rocky Top that the Tennessee Volunteers may have finally made the right hire as head coach of their football program.
It’s not necessarily the win-loss record that catches your eye in Josh Heupel’s first season as Tennessee’s head coach, although at 7-5, that went about as well as could’ve reasonably been expected in year one.
It’s more about the eye test. Tennessee’s offense was among the most fun to watch in the entire country. Tennessee’s defense, which didn’t have much depth heading into the season, largely played much better than most anticipated. In short, the Vols were fun to watch for the first time in a while.
If not for a few plays against Pittsburgh and Ole Miss, (which I realize many programs can say about many games throughout the course of a college football season) the Vols legitimately could have been 9-3.
The emergence of Hendon Hooker at quarterback was extremely encouraging. Hooker finished the regular season with 2,567 yards passing, 26 TDs and 3 INTs, a QBR of 77.8 and a 69% completion percentage. It was the best quarterback play that Tennessee has seen in a long time.
If Hooker elects to return to Knoxville and be the starting quarterback in 2022, that would be a huge boost for Heupel in his second season as coach.
Heupel’s knack for scripting plays to begin games and scheming receivers wide open was very promising. It was rare to come across an offensive series where you looked at the play calling and said “what the heck is he doing?” Which was quite the improvement from the previous coaching staff.
So what does it all mean? Is Heupel the guy to lead Tennessee back to the promised land of competing for championships? It’s still way too early to know the answer to that question. The results on the field have been very encouraging thus far, but the next step for Heupel and his staff is being able to recruit at an elite level.
As of Nov. 30, the Vols sit 24th in the nation in the 247Sports composite rankings. While that has improved from the mid-30s in the past couple of weeks and the Vols seem to be generating some positive momentum as the early signing period begins on Dec. 15, that still ranks ninth in the SEC behind Georgia, Alabama, Texas A&M, Kentucky, Missouri, LSU, Arkansas and South Carolina.
It will be interesting to see where Tennessee finishes in the recruiting rankings for the 2022 cycle. The ability to coach and develop players is obviously extremely important and Heupel and his staff showed great promise with that in year one. But at the end of the day in the SEC, if you’re going to compete for championships, you’ve got to have the horses to hang in there with the big boys.
There’s plenty of reasons for excitement if you’re a Tennessee fan based on what we’ve seen thus far in the Heupel era. However, I would contain it to “cautious optimism” for the time being. Remember the eight-game winning streak for Jeremy Pruitt? Remember the 5-0 start for Butch Jones in 2016?
Vol nation has anointed its fair share of coaches in the past only to watch them eventually flame out.
It’s been a really good start for Heupel. Now we’ll start to see if he can sustain it and build on it.
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