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If the new Josh Heupel stays, Tennessee football could become dangerous

Vaseline September 22, 2024

Who is this new Josh Heupel and what has he done with Turbo Heup? Whoever he is, he is a better coach than Mister Warp Speed.
Tennessee found a new way to win. It beat Oklahoma on defense.
Oklahoma’s offense looks scrappy and can’t handle the Vols’ disruptive defense.

NORMAN, Okla. – Josh Heupel wouldn’t have won a game like this earlier in his career. Maybe he didn’t have the defense to do it, but it goes deeper than that.

I think Heupel was just a little too obsessed with points, stats, yards and pace to put his foot down, avoid unnecessary chances and trust his defense to take care of business.

I always said that Heupel would rather lose 51-50 than win 21-20 – and that was only half joking.

I don’t say that anymore, not since Heupel showed that he will win no matter what.

In Heupel’s first six seasons as coach at UCF and then Tennessee, he won just once, when his team scored fewer than 30 points.

Now he has two such victories after No. 7 Tennessee defeated No. 13 Oklahoma 25-15 on Saturday at the Palace on the Prairie.

“You can tell in the second half, offensively, our game plan changed, possession-wise, time-wise,” Heupel said. “It was different than it’s probably ever been in my career.”

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Who is this man and what has he done with Turbo Heup?

Whoever he is, he’s a better coach than Mister Warp Speed.

The Vols racked up 11 tackles for loss, confused two Oklahoma quarterbacks and snuffed out any notion of a Sooners ground game.

“If you really want to play football at a high level, you need a high-level defense,” Heupel said.

Heupel’s players desperately wanted to win this game for their coach, the former Sooners star quarterback who won a national championship here as a player before Bob Stoops fired him as an assistant coach in 2015.

Tennessee played Luke Combs’ hit single, “Ain’t No Love In Oklahoma,” in the locker room after the win.

Nowadays, that’s no longer a punishment in Oklahoma either.

Here we have to sprinkle a few grains of salt on Tennessee’s defensive performance, because OU’s offense is undeniably a mess.

The Vols (4-0) still haven’t faced a good offense, so we’ll revisit this defense after Tennessee plays Georgia and Alabama later this season.

Still, it didn’t take an elite opponent to destroy some of Heupel’s previous defenses. An average South Carolina team devastated Tennessee for 507 yards and 63 points two years ago. Earlier that same season, an undersized Florida team besieged Tennessee for 594 yards.

And Purdue beat Tennessee for 627 yards in a bowl triumph at the end of Heupel’s first season.

Heupel building a defense is like Shaq learning how to make a free throw. How are you going to stop him now?

The skinny Oklahoma certainly couldn’t stop him.

Texas built an offensive line ready for the SEC. Oklahoma did not, and redshirt freshman quarterback Jackson Arnold looks lost behind that underpowered unit.

Heupel gave his strategy a tip on Tennessee’s first possession, sending the punt team out when faced with fourth-and-2 at Oklahoma’s 42-yard line.

If that seems unremarkable, consider that the Vols ranked in the top 20 in the country for fourth-down attempts in each of Heupel’s first two seasons at Tennessee. I don’t have an analytics cheat sheet handy, but I’d bet it probably says “Go” on fourth-and-2 from the opponent’s 42.

But what those advanced analytics didn’t predict: It was only a matter of time before Arnold made a mistake and put Tennessee ahead by a score.

When Arnold threw an interception in the first quarter — one of his three turnovers — the Vols turned the mistake into points.

Nico Iamaleava made just enough big throws to give Tennessee a small lead, then the defense took over.

Heupel always looked at the time of possession with his nose turned up. His first three Vols teams were in last or next to last place nationally for time of possession. Each of those teams had an average of less than 25½ minutes of possession per game.

On Saturday, the Vols held possession for almost 36 minutes. Heupel placed more value on possession than on tempo.

He also didn’t turn down any points. Instead of going for a fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter, Heupel opted for a short field goal and a 16-point lead.

Smart.

Heupel didn’t give up his calling card, but Tennessee didn’t need pace to win against Oklahoma. That the Vols’ defense became Heupel’s trump card showed his growth as a coach.

Blake Toppmeyer is the national college football columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

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