Tennessee’s loss to Texas has led to some unhinged takes from the negative portion of the Vols fan base. 

The worst take, by far, comes from fans suggesting Josh Heupel made a major mistake by starting true freshman quarterback Faizon Brandon this season instead of landing a high-priced option out of the transfer portal. 

Many of the fans suggesting this are the same ones who constantly complain that they hate the current era of college football and want things to go back to the way it was before the transfer portal and NIL. 

The irony is that Heupel is trying to build his program the “old school way” by focusing on development, while also understanding that he has to go get players from the portal to fill in the gaps. (And he’s done that well for the most part. Most of Tennessee’s portal additions hit. There are a few misses, but that’s inevitable when you don’t get much time to spend with these players before landing them during the winter transfer cycle.)

Tennessee’s best offense came with a returning starter at quarterback

The big issue for Tennessee over the last few years has been a lack of continuity at quarterback. The Vols’ best offensive season under Heupel came in 2022, which was Hendon Hooker’s second year as the program’s starter. Tennessee hasn’t had a returning starter since 2022, and the offense hasn’t been quite as dynamic (though there are multiple reasons for that, including rules changes that went into place after the 2022 season).

What Heupel is trying to do — instead of getting a new quarterback every single year — is develop a quarterback with elite talent. Every quarterback in college goes through true freshman ups and downs. The best scenario for any of those quarterbacks is to go through those ups and downs, stick with the same coaching staff, and develop over a few years.

In this era, it’s tough to get a young quarterback to stay around if he’s not playing. So the only option is to play Brandon, let him go through the growing pains that every young quarterback goes through, and then hope during his sophomore and junior seasons that he’s playing at a high level and gives Tennessee a chance to win a national championship.

That was always the plan going into this season, and it seemed like everybody was on board with it. But the moment Tennessee loses a close game to the No. 1 team in the nation, we have fans losing their minds that Heupel should have strayed from that strategy and just grabbed a quarterback from the portal.

And look, I don’t know who these fans wanted that quarterback to be. Sam Leavitt wanted to go to LSU with Lane Kiffin. He was a better fit for Kiffin than Heupel. Miami spent an insane amount of money to get Darian Mensah to leave Duke. Heupel checked in on Ty Simpson, but he chose to declare for the NFL Draft. It’s not like there were options just out there that were sure things.

The win-now-or-bust mentality among college fans is the worst thing possible for the sport. It is the same thing we see at the youth level in travel baseball and other travel sports. Maybe many of these people complaining about Heupel not getting a transfer quarterback and losing by three points to the No. 1 team in the nation are the same parents who move their kid from team to team every time they face just a little bit of adversity (sorry if that hits a little too close to home for some folks). 

I think Heupel made the right call. The truth is that having a multi-year starter at quarterback requires patience. Tennessee will be better off in the long run by letting Brandon develop instead of chasing a rental every offseason.

By the way, former Tennessee offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe, one of the wisest voices in college football, agrees. 

“There’s no question — I would take the young guy,” said Cutcliffe in early September. “I’m a huge believer in development. That period of time is just an awesome time for the youngster, and also for the coach. I have purposely not talked to Coach Heupel about all of this because I have a relationship with the MacIntyre family, and I didn’t want to get near any of that. And you never know (who will play well on Saturdays) until you know — it’s not over.

“But I think this is the way to go. This is an opportunity to grow a player where you’re not having to unteach so many things. You get to teach so many things. I went around to all of these SEC schools and watched multiple practices for four years, and it was interesting some of the things that I didn’t see being taught.”

“I don’t want to point fingers at anybody that takes a veteran,” added Cutcliffe. “I’m not saying that. … I just like that relationship of developing. There’s nothing like coaching a quarterback if you’re a quarterback guy. And having a young one that’s so open and eager and anxious to learn is awesome. And if they have talent, whoa, you’re getting ready to have a little fun.”

Development is still the most important thing in sports. If you sacrifice development for winning, well, you won’t win for long.