Tennessee vs Ranked Opponents

Think heupel will makes changes in defense. Their fans seem content with him

If he doesn't make changes it would become a problem. You have to remember we're fresh off butch Jones ans Dooley. We'll give him a pass this year but do expect changes on the defense

That’s the wide choice offense for ya, coming to the plains for 2026

I’m not on the Fire Banks train just yet. I attribute our defensive performance to attrition, injury, and youth. Given that he had us at the #23 and then #3 (ish) total defense in the previous two years, respectively, I’d let one more season play out.

Yeah we suck. But in all seriousness Heupels tenure will be the story of if he can hold assistant coaches accountable. There needs to be some changes. If not we could see a Dan Mullen situation in knoxville

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I don't think Heupel's a bad coach. But he is a coach who gained his position by using a relatively uncommon scheme. That works for a while, until enough opponents take it seriously and devote time to stopping it, and then it becomes less effective. The question now is whether Heupel has true coaching talent that transcends his scheme. That's a more rare commodity and takes a lot more skill than adhering to a scheme.

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Not implying his offense isn't capable of getting broken down but he scored enough to win against uga and the defense let them down

No. Only idiots want rid of him. We are more or less where I’d like expected to be after the offseason from hell. Think we have a chance to be good in the future. It could be a lot worse. At least Heupel has some decency unlike Kiffin. Sometimes fans need to learn to be patient

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How the hell does that “take out the element of scheme”?

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What's the goal of an offense; to score as many points as possible every time they have possession. Georgia's offense scored more points per possession than Tennessee's offense in non-garbage possessions. That was in all FBS games or only SEC games. It was also true if you adjust for opponent averages. In other words, Georgia's offense this year was more efficient than Tennessee's offense. And we've had lots of injuries.

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Heupel just took a D2 QB, put him in the offense for a few months, and produced the sixth best offense in the country.

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That's the point, he didn't do that and it wasn't the 6th best offense in the country. He took a G5 QB with about 6 years of post high school experience and put him in a system that defenses don't see very often. Heupel's scheme simplifies the QB's job which can lead to quicker uptake but not better long term results. It also works best when he runs plays at a fast pace, but that means more drives for the opposing offense as well, which makes your defensive numbers look worse.

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You claimed that looking at points per possession somehow takes “out the element of scheme”. Scheme/coaching plus talent equals total offensive output. Looking at points per possession doesn’t magically eliminate the element of scheme

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There's no magic here. It just seems like magic to you because you don't understand the data. An offense that scores more points on average when it has the ball is a more efficient, aka better, offense. The statistics are a combination of Brian Fremeau's FBS data (look at his offensive efficiency ratings) and my data which is based solely on SEC vs SEC games. Either way, in the 2025 regular season Georgia's offense has been better than Tennessee at scoring points when they have the football. And, like I said Georgia's offense has had injuries too. Every team has injuries.

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But he did. He took lesser talent and produced the sixth best offensive output in the country. He also took that talent and produced more ppg than UGA against tougher defenses.

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I haven't included this weekend's games yet, but Tennessee's offense wasn't 6th best in the nation. Fremeau's data has Tennessee's offense at #12, based on non-garbage drives and opponent adjusted. My opponent adjusted data only looks at SEC numbers and I have Tennessee at #4 in the SEC, behind UGA, Vandy, and Ole Miss (Vandy will move ahead of UGA after I include the latest numbers), ahead of Arkansas and TAMU. And Tennessee didn't face better defenses than Georgia, just the opposite.There's nothing bad about Tennessee's offensive numbers, they're just not as good as you believe them to be. You've chosen to look at statistics that don't give an accurate picture of offensive efficiency. And that's part of the reason fans often overestimate their team's prospects; the expectations were based on misleading data. (You may think I'm talking about Tennessee fans here, but Georgia fans do it too.)

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Finally, you’ve shifted to saying that Heupel’s offense doesn’t work because it hurts the defense.

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That's not a "shift", it's a statement of how football works. You may have noticed in football when one team scores, the other team gets the ball back. More offensive possessions equals more defensive possessions. I'm saying that Tennessee's defensive numbers under Heupel have been negatively affected by some of the same factors that made the offensive numbers looked good; more possessions. Possessions, i.e. scoring opportunities, tend to equal out between a team and their opponents. Also, teams that run an atypical offensive scheme generally don't replicate more typical offenses as well in practice.

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Explain why UT’s defense was significantly better the past two years than this year? The only logical explanation is defensive injuries this year

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Every team has injuries every year. Some years more, some less. That's not an analysis, it's an excuse. I don't have last year's data, but you played some very weak offenses with backup or first year quarterbacks. Your defense was likely to look worse in 2025 because the opposing offenses got better. Your defense may have actually been worse in 2025, but that doesn't mean that Heupel's offense has no effect on his defense; it does. That's why Tennessee has so many "injuries" on extra point attempts.

The point is that a "scheme' does not confer long lasting advantage. It only works until the other teams adapt. Teams are adapting to Heupel and will continue to do so. To the extent that Golesh runs a similar scheme, more SEC teams will face it every year.