Tennessee redshirt sophomore wide receiver Braylon Staley told reporters on Monday that the Vols’ offense “changed up a little bit” this offseason.

Now, it’s not like Josh Heupel overhauled the offense and completely changed his system this offseason.

Heupel is always evolving his offense — the Vols looked more pro-style last season, for example — so it was expected that there would be a few tweaks.

But what tweaks should fans expect to see?

Vols insider discusses what offensive changes he thinks Tennessee could implement in 2026

VolQuest’s Brent Hubbs joined WNML’s SportsTalk on Tuesday and discussed what changes he believes could be coming to Tennessee’s offense in 2026.

Specifically, Hubbs thinks there will be more shifts and motions as Tennessee looks for ways to simulate tempo. He also thinks the RPO game could have a different look (it’s been documented that the RPO game wasn’t a strong suit for quarterback Joey Aguilar last season).

Tennessee fans, though, shouldn’t expect to see too many of the changes in the season opener against Furman.

“I just think it’s building on some of the things that they did last year,” said Hubbs when asked about potential offensive changes. “And I don’t think fans are going to see it on Saturday (against Furman). I think they’ll be very vanilla in what they do. One of the things for tempo offensive coaches out there the last couple of years has been, ‘How do you adjust to the rule changes that limit tempo?’ If a ball goes out of bounds, the official is going to hold the play up because they don’t know if you’re substituting. So you can’t sneak somebody off the field and on the field as easily as you could in previous years like in 2022.

“I think the other thing that has happened, and nobody will confess to it, so this is my wild theory: I don’t think officials are marking the ball as fast as they used to. I think there’s just been a little bit of a natural slowdown that makes it harder to run 100 plays a game. … So what’s the counter to that? What we’ve seen over the last couple years, and Missouri’s kind of been at the forefront with this, not necessarily to counter tempo, but they’re trying to create things that make it harder for the defense to disguise their stuff. So they’re doing a lot of motions and shifts. … It wouldn’t shock me if there was some more of that in Tennessee’s offense this season.”

“But I think what Tennessee is doing offensively is they’re taking the changes they made last year that obviously helped that team — when you look at the explosiveness that returned (to the offense) and the production that they had in the passing game with Joey Aguilar — and they’re trying to build on some of that,” added Hubbs. “Both in the passing game and with some of the RPO stuff. And I think the RPO stuff has a chance to be very different than what we saw last year, and sort of what we’ve seen in most of the post-Hendon Hooker era. Which has been more [pass] in the RPO game instead of the run part. It’s been more of the passing option and not the running option with the quarterback. I think in certain situations, not this week, but I think in certain situations, you’re going to see more of the run game from the quarterback in the RPO game, which will create some challenges for defenses to try to stop this Tennessee offense.”

Obviously we don’t know exactly what new wrinkles are coming to Tennessee’s offense — that’s how Heupel wants it to be — but it’ll be something for Vols fans to keep an eye on early this season.