As much as things keep changing in college football, the one constant for me the last few years has been my previews for the Tennessee offense each season. Josh Heupel is now in year 6 in Knoxville, and OC Joey Halzle has been calling the plays since Alex Golesh left for USF back in 2023.
The Heupel offense is one that’s famously predicated on putting wide receivers WAAAY wide to force the defense into spread out formations, then attacking downfield with switch release routes or quick screens. And
they operate as fast as possible, trying to trap defenses into personnel with warp speed snapping and doing more post-snap reads.
Where the Vols offense has evolved over the years, though, is how much they’ve made the run game the central aspect of their attack, rather than the passing game. Sure, they’re spread out wide and going fast, but they make a LOT of hay with just straight inside zone runs.
They’re averaging a respectable 34.7 points per game, but the caveat is that they scored most of their points on Furman, Georgia Tech, and Kennesaw State, and since moving to SEC play they’ve scored 17 vs Texas, 24 against Auburn, and 24 against the corpse of Arkansas.
Through it, the Vols have been one of the best rushing teams in the country. They’re putting up 228 yards per game, with star running back DeSean Bishop already at 678 yards and 8 touchdowns on an impressive 6.3 yards per carry through 6 games. In particular, Bishop put up 258 of his yards this season the last two weeks. And he was also a 1000 yard rusher for the Vols a year ago, and put up 123 yards against Alabama in 2025. He’s one of the best backs in college football. He’s impressively tough to tackle, plays with a lot of power, and, most importantly, is a maestro at hitting cutbacks in their zone blocking scheme.
While the Vols’ rushing attack has been stellar, the passing game is where they’ve struggled. They’re only averaging 187 yards per game. QB Faizon Brandon is a 5-star true freshman who was the #10 overall recruit in the last recruiting cycle, and while he brought a lot of excitement to the Vol fanbase, he’s generally showed his age and inexperience through the first part of the season, struggling with taking sacks and running himself into pressure. Brandon picked up a shoulder injury at some point, and sophomore George MacIntyre took over for the Arkansas game last week in a sort-of-injury, sort-of-benching situation for Brandon.
MacIntyre did pass for over 200 yards, but he still took two sacks and threw two picks, so there wasn’t a whole lot of improvement. To this point, Brandon is back practicing for the Vols this week, but we don’t actually know who will wind up being the guy against Alabama.
At wide receiver, the limited passing game has almost solely gone through returning starters Braylon Staley and Mike Matthews. Staley is something of an old-school possession receiver who excels at moving the chains. He leads the team with 24 catches, but only has 193 total yards with that. His running mate, Mike Matthews, is the downfield threat, turning 22 catches into 396 yards. There’s a smattering of other receivers and tight ends with a few catches, but for the most part, the ball is either going to Staley or Matthews.
As far as the offensive line… It’s been downright offensive. The worst was when they played Texas and gave up 10 sacks in one day. They been generally solid at run blocking (except against Texas), but the pass blocking has left a lot to be desired.
This will be the third year in a row that the Huepel/Halzle takes on the Kane Wommack defense. In both years, the Vols scored 24 and 20 points, despite coming into the game scoring a whole lot more points. Wommack’s simple zone coverage focus has seemed to help them with Huepel’s outside stacks and releases, making this scheme match up much better than Saban’s pattern match in 2022.
Still, the Alabama defense has been reeling recently, giving up a lot of inside rushing yards to UGA and struggling to break up downfield deep shots all season. I think that Bishop will get over 100 yards on the Tide, unfortunately. However, I also don’t think that UT has the QB play to really be able to move the chains constantly on the Tide, ultimately limiting them to about 17 points, with a strong contingent of turnovers/sacks ending drives.
