NASHVILLE, Tenn. — How bad can it be?
Josh Heupel was on his way to messing around and finding out. Perfect Saturday for it, too. Rivalry week always delivers anyway, but rivalry week during this roller coaster of clown cars on fire of a 2024 college football season? A few hours after Georgia somehow escaped Georgia Tech in eight overtimes, and a few hundred miles from where Michigan was getting to work on its most shocking win over Ohio State in more than a half century, Heupel’s Tennessee team was down 14-0 in Vanderbilt’s FirstBank Stadium.
Some people who are reading these words were, at the least, cracking their knuckles in anticipation of typing very mean things about Heupel to post somewhere, and they were probably thinking about Butch Jones and 2016. His loss to Vandy in the same stadium cost that Tennessee team the Sugar Bowl and laid bare his limitations as a coach. The end was near, suddenly.
Heupel has done more in four seasons than Jones ever did, but the stakes Saturday were much higher, too — win and start preparing for the first 12-team College Football Playoff, lose and see if you can keep together enough of a roster to play in the Whatever Wherever Bowl, while questions about your ability to bring championships to Knoxville multiply in frequency and volume. Heupel would have been under fair administrative pressure in 2025 to make the 12, but beyond that? With Tennessee fans? It would have been real, real bad.
Job’s not finished. pic.twitter.com/1pnwLnvAK9
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) November 30, 2024
So scoring 36 straight points on the Commodores, turning in another dominant defensive performance, getting another clear step forward from redshirt freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava and winning 36-23 to unofficially clinch a Playoff spot was even better than all that sounds. It was, to quote Heupel, “sweet.” It was, to rank Heupel’s victories at Tennessee, arguably his second-biggest after the 2022 breakthrough against Nick Saban and Alabama.
The No. 8 Vols (10-2, 6-2 SEC) avoided disaster and the resulting negativity that can snowball and undermine coaching regimes like in no other sport. While they were at it, against a Clark Lea Vanderbilt team (6-6, 3-5) that is actually good — that beat Alabama this season, just like the Vols did — they put together about 45 minutes of football that would be effective against a lot of these other Playoff teams. Maybe all of them.
Realization started settling in as an appropriately chippy battle with the in-state rival transitioned to hugs, handshakes and the Vols singing “The Tennessee Waltz” with the UT band. About half of the 28,934 on hand were in orange and still hanging around, seeking autographs and spare equipment from players walking off the field. Tennessee senior defensive analyst Levorn Harbin, also known as “Coach Chop,” grabbed Iamaleava and said: “New season right here. Let’s go, boy.”
Then they got together in their space, and a week of “We can’t lose to these guys” turned into a “Guess what? We’re in!” celebration.
“You don’t really realize it until we get back to the locker room and everybody’s really excited,” said Tennessee junior running back Dylan Sampson, whose 178 rushing yards gave him a school single-season record of 1,485. “I had to take a little time to realize what we’ve actually got ahead of us. We’re in it, and there’s a lot more to accomplish. But that feeling is really unbeatable.”
The Vols earned it after giving up a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to Junior Sherrill on the first play of the game, then allowing a 26-yard touchdown drive to crafty Diego Pavia and the Commodores after Sampson fumbled on UT’s second play from scrimmage. The Vanderbilt offense that befuddled Alabama and did enough to win at Kentucky and Auburn found answers early. It ran 29 plays and gained 137 yards on its first four possessions.
It managed 17 plays and 57 yards in the next five possessions, and by the end of the fifth, the game was long over. Tennessee’s defense, which has carried this team all season through offensive lulls, gave up 212 yards, 4.3 per play, keeping Pavia to 104 passing yards and 45 on the ground. Jermod McCoy started to flip the game with an end-zone interception, and Bryson Eason and Will Brooks got it turned around all the way with a fourth-and-2 sack of Pavia.
The Vols came in having allowed three plays of 40 yards or more this season — only Ohio State and Wisconsin were better with two apiece — and they’ve still allowed just three.
And they might bring an offense with them to the Playoff, which could commence with a game in Knoxville if things keep breaking the Vols’ way. Iamaleava had one underthrown deep pass picked off by Martel Hight, but other than that he was spectacular, 18-for-26 passing for 257 yards and four touchdowns. He saw the field. He threw decisively. He used his legs when needed for 42 yards. He talked some trash when appropriate.
“I love to see that — I love it,” said UT senior tight end Miles Kitselman, who caught one of those touchdowns, of Iamaleava’s exchange with Vandy safety Kolbey Taylor.
Five-star freshman Mike Matthews had a touchdown, too, a thrilling sight for Tennessee fans but also an indication of a strained situation at the position. Bru McCoy (hamstring) gave it a go in pregame warmups but couldn’t play. Dont’e Thornton Jr. was on his way to a huge day — he had 118 yards and two touchdowns on three catches — but suffered an upper body injury and had to depart.
Still, Tennessee persevered and found answers. That describes the entire day. Mentally fragile teams don’t necessarily come back from the way Saturday’s game started.
Previous Heupel teams have let things get away from them on the road — the 2022 team, blowing a spot in the four-team Playoff with an ugly loss at South Carolina; the 2023 team, taking surprising drubbings at Florida and Missouri and disappearing completely in the second half at Alabama.
Not this team. It lost at Arkansas at the height of its offensive floundering. It let Carson Beck and Georgia get hot and come back two weeks ago. But this team has a toughness to it. It has, in Heupel’s words, “competitive composure.”
And it’s improving, especially at the most important position. Iamaleava came into the season with lofty outside expectations, has taken lumps in an offense that hasn’t always supported him well, and has made obvious strides since his big second half against Alabama on Oct. 19.
“Just taking control of the offense more,” Iamaleava said Saturday when asked to explain those improvements. “As a young guy, I still can do better at doing that. And yeah, man, I think it’s just me having full command of the offense, knowing what our coaches want, knowing what we want on certain plays.”
This offense doesn’t measure up to the record-breaking, nation-leading, Hendon Hooker-quarterbacked attack of two years ago. And it won’t. But it is now asked to complement one of the best defenses in the country, to run the ball, control clock and hit a few shots. It can do that.
It gets to do that. In the College Football Playoff.
“There’s an expectation from our staff and our players, it was a goal, but it was an expectation to be in this,” Heupel said. “And that comes from the work everybody put in who we have in the building. I’m proud of these guys for executing and putting us in a position to be there. Now, the next season starts. What are we gonna do with it?”
Put another way: How good can it be?
As good as it gets is the only answer at this point, in this season, amid the field full of flawed teams that will be assembled Dec. 8.
(Photo of Tennessee’s Holden Staes and Nico Iamaleava: Johnnie Izquierdo / Getty Images)
