The biggest reason the Tennessee Vols came up short in 2025 sounds like an excuse, but it’s not
Tennessee Vols fans don’t want to hear excuses after a blowout loss at home to the Vanderbilt Commodores.
The Tennessee Vols won’t be returning to the College Football Playoff for a second straight season.
Instead, the Volunteers will likely be heading to Florida to play in a non-marquee bowl game.
The Vols’ 45-24 loss to the Vanderbilt Commodores on Saturday in Neyland Stadium dropped Tennessee’s record to 8-4.
Tennessee looked like a playoff-caliber team at times in 2025, but the Vols simply weren’t consistent enough to put themselves in a position to compete for a national championship in December and January.
The biggest reason Tennessee came up short in 2025 sounds like an excuse, but it’s not
There are plenty of reasons why Tennessee came up short in 2025, from poor coaching decisions to poor execution — consistency, again, was severely lacking for the Vols this season.
But I think there was an understandable reason for that.
Tennessee had the highest percentage of freshmen on its roster in the SEC in 2025. They also had the lowest percentage of seniors. Additionally, UT was in the bottom half of the league in graduate players on its roster.
Vanderbilt, on the other hand, had the oldest roster in the SEC.
It’s true that Tennessee’s coaching could’ve been better this season. But it’s also true that many of the mistakes that were made this season were largely due to youth and inexperience. The Vols had to play more young players than any other program in the SEC. There’s no way that can be ignored. College football, despite the narratives you hear from the national media, is still about development.
I’ve said this a bunch and I stand by it — large NIL checks don’t speed up the development process. Young players are always going to make mistakes. These players aren’t finished products coming out of high school. They may be getting paid big money, but they aren’t pro players.
I know it sounds like an excuse, but it’s just reality for the Vols.
And to Vols head coach Josh Heupel’s credit, he didn’t use youth and inexperience as an excuse in 2025.
“Our young guys don’t have time to be young,” said Heupel at SEC Media Days in July. “You can look at the schedule that we play early. You can look at being inside of this league. Our young guys have got to grow early. That’s been something that’s been talked about for me, applying pressure to our staff to get them ready.”
Heupel didn’t have a roster with the necessary experience to be a true national championship contender this season. And that’s okay. Teams aren’t going to compete for a national championship every season. This is how it’s always been in college football (outside of outliers like Alabama and Georgia, who managed to gobble up elite talent at a historical pace in the pre-NIL era).
There’s undoubtedly things the Vols have to do better moving forward. Heupel, for example, needs to be better on game days (I truly believe he has too much on his plate on game days — and maybe even in game prep, due to his insistence on calling plays). And the defense obviously has to be better.
But an 8-4 season, with losses to four playoff-caliber teams, while trotting out the youngest roster in the SEC, isn’t a bad year. And it can’t be viewed that way. Otherwise, things are going to get real toxic in Knoxville this offseason, and that’s absolutely the last thing Tennessee needs right now.
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