Prominent college football analyst thinks Tennessee Vols are in for a difficult season, but he's not giving up on Josh Heupel
Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt isn’t “buying” the Tennessee Vols in 2025, but he’s not totally out on Josh Heupel and UT football. Klatt, in fact, says he still believes in Tennessee longterm, he just thinks the Vols are in store for a “difficult” season in 2025. “This is for one year based […]
Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt isn’t “buying” the Tennessee Vols in 2025, but he’s not totally out on Josh Heupel and UT football.
Klatt, in fact, says he still believes in Tennessee longterm, he just thinks the Vols are in store for a “difficult” season in 2025.
“This is for one year based on where they have been. And if you look at this team winning 10 games a year ago, averaging over 10 wins the last three seasons, Tennessee is a team that I could see take a step back (in 2025),” said Klatt. “Tennessee is, right now, a sell team. They’ve got the quarterback situation, which I don’t love. Losing a quarterback that late in the spring is not great. So you can make the argument that, well, ‘We didn’t like Nico [Iamaleava] anyways’. You know what? Fine, that’s your prerogative. But timing of that was not great, because the way they had to fill that in the transfer portal is with Joey Aguilar.
“So Aguilar comes in [via] the spring portal, which means he hasn’t had a lot of time with Josh Heupel in that system. He came from App State, but then spent a short time at UCLA. So UCLA and Tennessee kind of just traded quarterbacks. And this is a quarterback-centric system. It puts a lot of pressure on the quarterback to make post snap downfield reads on wide receiver choice routes. That’s what the offense is. So that player is vital. Aguilar, by the way, led the country in interceptions last year with 14 when he was at App State. I think that’s a problem. They also have to replace the SEC Offensive Player of the Year in Dylan Sampson, [as well as] four starters off the offensive line. And the wide receiver group is young.
“I think the defense should be fine,” continued Klatt. “Their best cornerback, Jermod McCoy, is coming off that ACL injury that was suffered in January. I think that they should be okay. The schedule is reasonable based on SEC standards. I think they’re probably going to be a 5-1 team going into Alabama in October. That would be projecting a September loss against Georgia. I think we’re all okay with that. But then they would have road games against Bama and Florida, and a home game against Oklahoma. Not an easy schedule. It’s a conference that’s not going to give you any weeks off…this is an easy team to sell for this year, again based on where they’ve been and where they might be this year. It’s not a long term thing. I do believe in Tennessee long term. I just think that this season could be a difficult one.”
That’s not an unreasonable take from Klatt as there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Vols this season.
But I also think there’s the possibility that he could be very wrong. Tennessee has the talent to compete for a national championship based on the latest Blue-Chip Ratio — the Vols just need a lot to go right to get to that point.
Tennessee fans may not love Klatt’s take, but the players in the Vols’ locker room probably do — especially senior tight end Miles Kitselman.
“I just love it how we truly do have this chip on our shoulder and that there’s not a whole lot of spotlight on us right now,” said Kitselman to ESPN last week. “There’s a lot of people that don’t expect anything out of us, and I absolutely love that you guys [the media] are going to look up at midseason and go, ‘Tennessee is 7-0. They’re doing it.’”
The Vols will get their first chance to prove the media wrong on August 30 when they open the season against Syracuse.
