There aren’t many things in college football that have been dissected as much as the Tennessee Vols’ offense has been over the last few years.

We all know the narrative by now — analysts and opposing fans like to question whether the Vols’ offense under Josh Heupel adequately prepares players for the NFL.

“The teams I talked to, a couple of them said, ‘I’m not picking a receiver out of Tennessee,’” said longtime NFL insider James Palmer last month. “I’m just not doing it. … I had a text yesterday from somebody that said, ‘I’m not taking a Tennessee wide receiver.’”

In Heupel’s early seasons on Rocky Top, the Vols were mostly an up-tempo veer-n-shoot offense à la the old Baylor Bears offense under Art Briles.

Tennessee, however, has recently started shifting away from that style of offense.

“The guys that keep saying something about wide receivers, I’m not sure they watched any tape this offseason,” said Heupel late last month in response to the criticism.

“The league, defensively and scheme (wise), is dramatically different than when we first got here,” continued Heupel. “And that’s just the game. It’s a never-ending evolution and cycle. And so [there were] some things that we needed to add to our arsenal to help us out offensively.”

“We always evolve,” added Heupel. “Every single year we truly do.”

Former Vols offensive coordinator Alex Golesh shares thoughts on Tennessee’s offense from last season

Former Vols offensive coordinator Alex Golesh, who is now the head coach at Auburn, joined The Cube Show with Cole Cubelic this week and shared some thoughts on UT’s offense from this past season.

Golesh, who served as Heupel’s offensive coordinator for one season at UCF (2020) and two seasons at Tennessee (2021-2022), also discussed the way Heupel was committed to evolving when he entered the SEC five years ago.

“Heup’s biggest thing was ‘Hey, everything we’ve just done (at UCF), if we don’t change, we’re gonna get blown up,’” said Golesh. “And I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ And he’s like, ‘Listen, in this league, one, we don’t have better players than everybody. And two, in this league, they have corners that can play press man every snap.’ Which is like, alright, I get that. So we’ve got to move bodies. We’ve got to stack bodies. We’ve got to create leverages in different ways.

“This league was different and and so Heup said, ‘Man, you’ve got to change. We’ve got to change.’ And it forced me, and forced our offensive staff, to take another step and change.”

“I left [the SEC] three and a half years ago, and it was us and Ole Miss [running that style of offense], because (Jeff) Lebby was still at Ole Miss doing a version of it,” added Golesh. “And I come back and there’s — we’ve got six teams on our schedule this year, including Southern Miss, that does a version of what we do from a big picture scheme standpoint. And we’ve all evolved. You look at Tennessee — now is really the first time I’ve had a chance to study them in the spring — and they don’t look anything like they looked when I was there.“

That last line should certainly be interesting to not just Tennessee fans but all college football fans. It lines up almost exactly with what former Vols wide receiver Chris Brazzell said last week at Carolina Panthers minicamp about the evolution of Tennessee’s offense.

“Everybody knows Tennessee as the run-n-gun,” said Brazzell. “Which, they’re right — I’m not gonna sit here and lie. So in 2024, that was a lot of run-n-gun. But this year, if you really watch my film, I’m running damn near every route in the playbook. Every route I’ve ran here, I ran at Tennessee.

“There’s not a route I’ve ran here that I have not [already] ran. So Tennessee is definitely evolving the playbook. They’re getting more pro-style. So yeah, I haven’t really ran a route here that I haven’t run at Tennessee.”

There aren’t many people who understand Heupel and his offensive philosophy better than Golesh.

So if Golesh is telling us that the Vols’ offense looks completely different than it did in 2022 when he was calling plays, then I think it’s safe to say it’s not the same offense that’s been ripped to shreds by every draft analyst on the planet.