National college football analyst makes strong statement about Josh Heupel’s hot seat status after Tennessee’s loss to lllinois
The Tennessee Vols finished the 2025 season with an 8-5 record after falling to Illinois in the Music City Bowl.
The Tennessee Vols’ 2025 season wasn’t a disaster, but it also didn’t go the way many fans had hoped.
A combination of ill-timed mistakes, injuries, and unexpected roster issues (losing quarterback Nico Iamaleava during spring practice and the Boo Carter saga) created too much adversity for a young Tennessee team to overcome.
Despite the adversity, Tennessee was still just a few plays away from being a College Football Playoff team. But that seems to be falling on deaf ears, as many fans and analysts are too distracted by the Vols’ 8-5 record to look at the nuance behind why the season played out the way it did.
National analyst makes strong statement about Josh Heupel’s hot seat status after Tennessee’s loss to lllinois in the Music City Bowl
Unsurprisingly, there are some folks who feel like head coach Josh Heupel should be on the hot seat after the Vols’ 30-28 loss to Illinois in the Music City Bowl on Tuesday night.
Not everyone, though, shares that view.
CBS Sports’ Will Backus made it clear on Wednesday that he doesn’t think Heupel should be on the hot seat going into the 2026 season.
“Heupel isn’t anywhere near the hot seat at this point, nor should he be,” wrote Backus. “His efforts in revitalizing Tennessee as it clawed its way out of its darkest decade since the university started sponsoring a football team has bought him some much-deserved leeway.
“But there is some pressure on Heupel to retool his approach in the offseason as questions start to mount. He already started prior to the Music City Bowl by firing former defensive coordinator Tim Banks — who had been on staff since Heupel arrived in Knoxville — and replacing him with veteran Jim Knowles.”
I think Backus is spot on there. Heupel has worked miracles at Tennessee since arriving in early 2021. It hasn’t been perfect — there’s certainly a lot the Vols need to improve on under Heupel (clock management, cutting down on penalties, etc) — but it’s been far better than what we saw from Tennessee football in the 10 years before Heupel’s arrival.
I also don’t think it’s fair to evaluate Heupel’s job status based on the outcome of a bowl game where Tennessee was without its top wide receiver, top cornerback, top linebacker, and top EDGE (and the Vols had an interim defensive coordinator for the game). There’s plenty that Heupel and his staff could’ve done better against Illinois, but the context of the game matters.
Ultimately, if a couple of plays go Tennessee’s way in 2025, the Vols are probably in the College Football Playoff.
And I’m not sure how anyone could put a coach that was just a few plays away from the playoff on the hot seat.
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