Josh Heupel addresses fixing Tennessee's second-quarter struggles in 2022

Tennessee coach Josh Heupel is painfully aware of his team’s lack of production in the second quarter from this past season. Now heading into his Year 2 as the Volunteers coach, he is doing everything in his power to fix it.

On Sunday prior to the start of fall camp, Heupel explained how many of Tennessee’s offseason workouts have implemented a four-quarter element. His hope with this is not to improve just the second quarter, but also teach the importance of playing a complete game.

“No magic potion. In some of those games where that was very pointed, it’s some of the things that we controlled,” Heupel said. “In particular on the offensive side of the football. Everything that we’ve done from how we describe our offseason, you guys have heard me talk about the four quarters. To what we do in the weight room, we relate it to four quarters during the course of the week. We try to relate everything to football, the four quarters and how they’re played out. We want to start fast, finish extremely strong and compete our butt off in the middle of the football game.”

Not counting games against Bowling Green, Tennessee Tech and South Alabama from this past season, Tennessee was outscored by an average of 5.6 points in the second quarter. In games against Ole Miss, Pittsburgh and Purdue — all of which were decided by a touchdown or less — the Volunteers were outscored by a combined total of 57-13.

Tennessee still finished with a 7-6 record, but ultimately its second-quarter struggles were one barrier that prevented it from reaching 10 wins. Heuepel believes that as the team grows more used to his system, those mistakes will work themselves out.

“A year into our strength and conditioning program, a year into our systems we feel like we have an opportunity to play better in all areas and phases of the game,” he said. “Certainly we’ve got to be better in the second quarter, but we’ve got to be better in the fourth quarter too. There’s a lot of opportunities for growth.”

The Volunteers will kick off the 2022 season on Sept. 1 against Ball State.