Josh Heupel reveals Tennessee's secret to handling expectations

Expectations were love for Josh Heupel and the Tennessee Volunteers when he first got to Knoxville. Then, in 2021, he led Tennessee to a bowl game. Then, Heupel followed that up with an Orange Bowl win.

Now, expectations are incredibly high in Knoxville. As Heupel explained on The Hard Count with J.D. PicKell, you can’t pay attention to outside noise.

“Yeah, whether they’re low expectations or high expectations, our group has not paid attention to the outside noise,” Josh Heupel said. “Not that you don’t hear it, but that’s not going to define who we are when we get to Saturdays next fall.”

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“What defines us is our work habits and how we compete at everything that we’re doing, every rep, every set, every team period,” Heupel said.

“And our guys have been really intentional in the way that they’ve competed. So focus on our process of continuing to become what you can individually and thus collectively as a unit and we’ll be ready for next fall.”

Playing in the same division as Georgia means that there is a team with a higher standard right now. That’s clearly a hump for the Volunteers to get over. The question is whether or not Josh Heupel can lead Tennessee over that hump before the SEC expands and the scheduling model changes.

Whether Tennessee gets past Georgia or not, Tennessee is still going to be expected to repeat its best season since 2001.

Josh Heupel on player development

One thing that has been very important to Josh Heupel finding success at Tennessee has been player development. Moving forward, he knows that the program’s ability to continue to develop talent will have a major impact on the Volunteers reaching their expectations.

“Well, I do think that the development of the athletes that we have here has been shown in the first couple of years. What we do on the strength side of it, you know, developing the athlete specific to his position. You’ve seen the way that they’ve performed at Pro Days, at combines. So, I don’t think you ever give up on the development of your roster,” Heupel said.

“At the end of the day, everybody that steps foot on his campus, day one, you better have the mentality and the approach that I’m competing to be the starter right now, here today. If you do anything less than that, you’re cheating yourself, you’re cheating the program, you’re not going to be ready when your opportunity comes. At the same time, for the 125 guys that sit in our team room, it’s their responsibility, it’s their job, to prove that they’re gonna play at a championship level. When you do that, then it’s our job as coaches to find a role that’s going to allow you to play at a really high level and help us win football games.”