The Tennessee Vols did not take it easy on their friends from Johnson City on Saturday.

Tennessee blew out East Tennessee State 72-17 in front of a packed house in Neyland Stadium.

The Vols never slowed down, continuing to run their offense even with the second-team, third-team, and fourth-team units in the game.

Tennessee put up 717 total yards of offense, including 288 passing yards from starting quarterback Joey Aguilar and 118 passing yards from backup quarterback Jake Merklinger.

Tennessee’s blowout win against ETSU confirmed something important about UT head coach Josh Heupel in 2025

Entering the 2025 season, plenty of fans and folks in the media speculated that Tennessee’s Josh Heupel would be coaching with a chip on his shoulder this fall due to all of the noise surrounding the program during the offseason (Nico Iamaleava’s transfer, low expectations from the national media, etc).

After watching the way Heupel coached against ETSU, I think it’s safe to say that’s definitely the case.

Heupel was aggressive against ETSU, throwing the ball 52 times (compared to 48 rush attempts) despite having enough points to win the game by the end of the first quarter.

And not only was Heupel aggressive, he was unhappy about the plays that weren’t executed in the first half.

“I’m going to be honest, I thought we were really sloppy at times,” said Heupel to ESPN at halftime. “There’s a lot that we need to clean up. We need to play better. That’s in some of our targets, our perimeter screen game, our execution in the pass game. There’s a lot to improve on….Second half, we’ll define what we’re about. We need to come out and execute and play better than we did.”

Tennessee was up 48-7 when Heupel made those comments (which gave off Nick Saban vibes).

I don’t know how this season is going to go for the Volunteers. Maybe it ends with Tennessee hoisting a trophy, or maybe the Vols struggle. We’ll find out over the next few months after we follow Tennessee’s journey.

What I do know, though, is that Heupel is on a mission. And he wants his players’ sole focus to be on the next play, the next practice rep, the next lift, the next film review. Whatever the next task at hand is, that’s all that matters — which is clearly the message Heupel was sending to his team at half time.

We’ll see what the Vols really have next Saturday when they host the Georgia Bulldogs for a huge early-season showdown.

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Zach Ragan