A pair of simple but damning stats sum up who Tennessee was in a forgettable 2025 season
The Vols reached low points in a pair of key areas in Josh Heupel’s tenure in Knoxville.
The Tennessee Volunteers’ 2025 season ended in an unfortunate but appropriate way – with a loss to a team with a winning record in a physically underwhelming fashion. In their 30-28 loss to Illinois in the Music City Bowl, the Vols were pushed around by Illinois, particularly when the Illini were on offense.
The Vols allowed 221 rushing yards at 5.7 yards per rush on Tuesday. The previous game? 582 total yards to Vanderbilt with 314 coming by way of the ground attack. They also allowed a flat-out poor Oklahoma offense (at least poor as far as decent teams go) to run for 192 yards at 5.5 yards per carry and control much of the game. Oh, and Kentucky put up 34 points and 476 yards with 146 on the ground. That’s about as bad as it gets.
In fact, it was as bad as it’s been in the Josh Heupel era in two respects, and it’s a damning figure as far as the physicality on both sides of the ball. The Vols averaged the lowest amount of rushing yards per game on offense while allowing the most rushing yards per game on defense in Josh Heupel’s five seasons at Tennessee.
Tennessee produced the fewest rushing yards and the most rushing yards allowed during Josh Heupel’s tenure
Tennessee likes to run the ball a whole lot more than many around the country believe. The Vols have proven to be a run-heavy team despite a belief they air it out, which they do when they can. But the sledding was the toughest this season on the ground, as the Vols’ 173.5 yards per game was the fewest by Tennessee by a wide margin in the last five years. The previous low was, ironically, the 11-win 2022 team, who averaged 199.5 yards per game rushing. While the Vols didn’t have a Dylan Sampson or Jaylen Wright in the backfield this year, the line play ahead of the backs simply wasn’t good enough.
And it definitely wasn’t on the other side of the ball either. Tennessee allowed 152.4 rushing yards per game. By comparison, the 2021 defense, which was a sieve at times, allowed 148.5. The 2025 defensive front was not going to be as good as the 2024 group, given the talent that left for the NFL in James Pearce, Jr., Omarr Norman-Lott, and Elijah Simmons. And Tennessee had some injuries with Jaxson Moi and Daevin Hobbs missing time. But what was left vastly underperformed and didn’t hold up well enough physically throughout the season.
New defensive coordinator Jim Knowles has a lot of work to do, and Josh Heupel and Joey Halzle have to evaluate what went wrong on the offensive side of the ball as well. And with the transfer portal about to open before what could be Heupel’s most important offseason during his tenure, they can’t afford many misses in order to get this team looking like the tough, physical playoff version of the Vols from 2024.
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