Bio Blast: Tennessee Volunteers
A big boy football game will be played Saturday night under the lights at Neyland Stadium. Mark Stoops and No. 19 Kentucky will come to Rocky Top hoping to play spoiler.
In year two under former UCF head coach Josh Heupel, the Vols are playing some excellent football as they lead the country in scoring offense with a Heisman Trophy contender at quarterback. Tennessee also has a defense that is making offenses one-dimensional.
A huge opportunity awaits Kentucky. Let’s start diving into the Vols as Heupel has this team on the verge of playing for a national championship.
Unique spread scheme
After a quick stop in junior college, Josh Heupel landed at Oklahoma to become the first QB1 under new head coach Bob Stoops. In that first season, Heupel teamed up with offensive coordinator Mike Leach to bring the Air Raid to the Big 12. After winning the national championship with the Sooners in 2000, Heupel would return to campus in 2004 to begin his coaching career after a short stint in the NFL.
Heupel would become a full-time staff member at Oklahoma in 2006 and would spend nine years in Norman. From 2011-14, Heupel would serve as the co-offensive coordinator with current Colorado State head coach Jay Norvell still running a version of the Air Raid with no huddle tempo mixed in. However, a new kind of offense was becoming more popular in Oklahoma’s backyard.
From 2011-15, Art Briles went 50-15 at Baylor with two conference titles and a near College Football Playoff berth in 2014 running the veer-and-shoot offense. The spread scheme played with extreme tempo stretching the field to the sideline with large wide receiver splits to create huge running lanes against a light box and sizable throwing windows with a multitude of vertical route combinations that should be easy reads for the quarterback. Throughout his tenure, Baylor become a high-level rushing operation that could also consistently create chunk plays through the air.
Heupel adopted that scheme by working with former Baylor quality control assistant Joe Jon Finley for two years at Missouri and then with 10-year Baylor assistant Jeff Lebby for one year at UCF. Those two now work together at Oklahoma while Heupel has arguably built the best version of the Briles offense.
Since 2017, Heupel’s offense has ranked inside the top 15 in scoring offense and has a streak of four consecutive top-10 finishes. That is surely going to continue this year as the Vols are averaging 50.1 points per game. Drew Lock, McKenzie Milton, Dillon Gabriel, and Hendon Hooker have all played at a high level in this scheme. Each QB has averaged at least 8.5 yards per attempt in a season as a starter. Meanwhile, the ground attack has remained strong as Heupel is on the verge of having a fifth consecutive offense finish inside the top 25 in rushing yards per game.
In Knoxville, Heupel is using an offense not many defenses have answers for right now and it’s leading to a special season.
Hendon Hooker has changed everything
Before Jeremy Pruitt and his staff were dismissed at Tennessee, they took a very important transfer following the 2020 season. Former Virginia Tech quarterback Hendon Hooker enrolled at Tennessee on Jan. 7, and Pruitt was fired less than two weeks later.
Timing can be everything.
Josh Heupel was hired shortly after, and an offensive transformation began in Knoxville. To run his system, Heupel needs a big-armed quarterback that can make vertical throws. The coaching staff believed Michigan transfer Joe Milton was going to be that guy for them.
However, Milton struggled to start the 2021 season but was replaced by Hooker in Week 2. That became the launch point for the new Tennessee.
As a first-year starter, Hooker set high marks in Heupel’s offense in completion percentage (68%) and yards per attempt (9.7) while avoiding turnovers. That led to six outings of 45-plus points for this Tennessee attack to end the year. Those numbers have only increased this season as Hooker is completing 70.6 percent of his passes and averaging 10.8 yards per attempt as the Vols have scored at least 34 points in every game this season.
Add in his rushing ability, and Hooker has unlocked this wide-open spread scheme that was already very difficult to slow down. The super senior is the No. 1 reason why Tennessee is at 7-0 with a great chance at a return to championship glory in December.
Run stuffing front
Tennessee wins football games with its offense. Josh Heupel has built this team to use tempo as a weapon and put pressure on opponents by making the game a bunch of one-on-one matchups. However, you need to have a defense that can play complementary football with your offense.
For defensive coordinator Tim Banks, that means selling out to stop the run. The Vols want to create havoc plays and force opposing teams to be pass-heavy. By doing that, it forces opponents to get into a shootout with Tennessee’s offense. That is exactly what the Vols want.
In their four-down front, Tennessee is legitimately nine-deep and will have six players at 290-plus pounds playing snaps. Meanwhile, both inside linebackers play extremely downhill and are brought on run blitzes quite often. The No. 1 goal is for this offense to stop the run. They’ve been very good at it to this point in the season.
Tennessee enters Week 9 ranking No. 8 in yards per rush allowed (2.9) as foes are rushing for just 90.9 yards per game against the Vols. Florida (6.4 yards per rush) and Alabama (6.0 yards per rush) have the top two rushing offenses in the SEC, and neither had a ton of success against the Vols. Tennessee held Florida to 141 yards on 3.4 yards per rush and limited Alabama to 114 yards on 3.7 yards per rush.
The Vols sell out to stop the run and have been very good at achieving their top goal on defense each week.
Big play hunting
The most dangerous part about this Tennessee offense is how seemingly routine it is for them to create chunk plays. Most of that is due to the passing game as Hendon Hooker leads college football in yards per attempt (10.8) with a very strong explosive pass rate (22.6%). The Vols lead college football in 30-plus yard plays (32), and one player continues to make monster plays.
Jalin Hyatt is well on his way to All-American honors as the junior wideout leads the Vols in receptions (40), receiving yards (769), and receiving touchdowns (12). The former four-star prospect has logged eight receptions of 40-plus yards becoming the best big-play threat in college football.
Josh Heupel often aligns Hyatt as the second receiver in stack formations creating advantageous matchups with safeties in space as much as possible. If the Vols can connect on bombs to Hyatt it makes this offense very, very difficult to stop.
Iffy pass defense
If you’re looking for Tennessee’s biggest weakness, look no further than the secondary. The Vols enter this week’s contest ranking No. 114 in pass defense EPA as Power Five quarterbacks have had a lot of success against this group.
- Anthony Richardson (Florida): 453 passing yards, 10.3 yards per attempt
- Kedon Slovis (Pittsburgh): 8.1 yards per attempt on 24 throws before being injured in the second quarter
- Jayden Daniels (LSU): 300 passing yards
- Bryce Young (Alabama): 455 passing yards, 8.8 yards per attempt
Tennessee has already lost starting cornerback Warren Burrell for the season, and the status of starting safety Jaylen McCullough is currently unknown for Saturday. New cornerback Christian Charles has struggled in coverage to this point as Tennessee will ask their secondary players to play in isolation at times when the Vols sellout to stop the run.
There are big plays to be found in the air as this defense rank No. 115 in 20-plus yard passes allowed (32).
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