Former Vols player points out trend that's starting to impact Tennessee and it should be a major concern for Josh Heupel
Over the last few weeks, it's become apparent that the Tennessee Vols' offense struggles when its opponent possesses unique insight into Josh Heupel's scheme. Tennessee has scored just 37 points on offense in their last two games (14 against Arkansas and 23 against Oklahoma). Tough road environments are partially to blame for the Vols' recent […]
Over the last few weeks, it's become apparent that the Tennessee Vols' offense struggles when its opponent possesses unique insight into Josh Heupel's scheme.
Tennessee has scored just 37 points on offense in their last two games (14 against Arkansas and 23 against Oklahoma). Tough road environments are partially to blame for the Vols' recent offensive futility, but the familiarity that Oklahoma and Arkansas had with Heupel's scheme likely played a major role in holding UT's offense down.
Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables coached alongside Heupel for nearly a decade in Norman. And former Sooners offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby (he was Venables' offensive coordinator for two seasons at OU before leaving for Mississippi State) previously served as Heupel's offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at UCF.
Arkansas, meanwhile, has two former Vols on their roster (offensive lineman Addison Nichols and defensive back Doneiko Slaughter) who obviously know all the "secrets" of Heupel's offense. The Razorbacks also ran an offense similar to Heupel's under head coach Sam Pittman from 2020 to 2022 when Kendal Briles served as Arkansas' offensive coordinator.
It doesn't seem like a coincidence that Tennessee's two worst offensive games this season came against opponents that know the Vols' offense well.
Former Tennessee tight end Jacob Warren joined Off the Hook Sports this week to discuss the Vols' loss to the Razorbacks and he had a similar take.
"You also have to think about the fact that there's a couple of people on that Arkansas defense that know this offense really, really well," said Warren. "And we don't have to talk about the different people, but when you get transfers out, there are impact players that go other places and they'll start having an impact against you. So I'm not saying there's somebody that knew everything we were doing or whatever. I don't want to get into that at all. But you do have an offensive center (Nichols), right, an offensive lineman that played in this system for a few years. You have a safety (Slaughter) that played against this system for a few years. So I think just going into that game with knowledge of our offense, I think that's when this offense struggles. When they play competitors that have either seen it many times before or have people, coaches, players, whoever, involved in their program that have been at Tennessee or at a Josh Heupel school and you kinda see it being a trend where they run into issues when people start getting a bead on what's going on."
Oklahoma and Arkansas both played a different style of defense against Tennessee than what they showed on film. And the Vols struggled to adjust.
I'm not in the film room with the coaches so I don't know exactly how big of an issue this is for Tennessee, but it seems clear, especially after hearing Warren's comments, that it's at least a factor in the Vols' offensive struggles in recent weeks.
Heupel and his staff are going to have to find a way to evolve — especially against programs that have some unique insight into Tennessee's offense.
This isn't a problem that's going to go away. In fact, it's only going to become more common as guys from the Heupel coaching tree land jobs at other programs. We always knew that SEC defenses would adjust to Heupel's offense. Now it's time for Heupel to adjust to the defensive looks that Tennessee is suddenly starting to see.
