Everything Josh Heupel Said After 2022 Orange Bowl Victory

Miami Gardens, Fla.-- Tennessee downed Clemson 31-14 in the Orange Bowl on Friday night. Following the outing, Josh Heupel had plenty to say, which you can read below. 

Opening Statement:

First, I said it during the course of the week, but thank you to everybody involved with this entire setup. The Orange Bowl committee, South Florida, the hospitality has been second to none. This has been a special game for me in my past, and I've always been treated the right way here. A fantastic week for our staff and for our players, great experiences for them, and obviously it culminates tonight with a great win for us. Thank you to Vol Nation for showing up in the way that they did, fun to see them fly in from all across the country and come and help us go compete tonight. I appreciate everything that they've done, not just tonight but on our entire journey this season.

It was awesome, fun to see so many VFLs, former players show up during the course of the week four days prior to game day and they started showing up in droves out at practice, around the hotel. It was great to get an opportunity to connect with you guys.

You guys have built an unbelievable legacy here, and it's something that we're continuing to strive to go chase and embrace every single day. Thank you for the legacy that you've left.

All season long we've talked about learning how to compete and finish at the end. This month the message was really consistent with that, as well. It was about finishing our season, finishing this legacy, for the guys that have been here the last two years or whenever they came in, I'm not sure a group has done more in a shorter amount of time to help revive a prominent program the way this group has.

So proud of the players and the staff, the connection that we have, being accountable to one another, loving to compete and doing it together every single day.

Tonight was a lot of fun. Unbelievable defensive performance. Special teams were rock solid, and Joe and the offense were able to find a way to make a bunch of big plays and get the ball into the end zone. Great night for Tennessee. The best is yet to come, but really excited about what happened tonight.

On Bowl Games Mattering More than People Say

Heupel: Man, bowl games matter. You watch them every single day, you can see the energy, effort, strain, the excitement, the disappointment on the other side. They matter. It doesn't mean that everybody has everybody for the ballgame. That's just the nature of where we're at during the course of bowl season.

But it matters for everybody that shows up. It matters to the head coaches, the assistants. It matters to the fans. It matters to the players. These guys are prideful. Clemson is prideful. When you line up and compete, man, you're going to compete with everything that you've got. These are rare opportunities. 21 years ago, whatever it was, I got an opportunity to play here inside of this stadium, and the memories that I have from that, I don't talk about my playing days a lot with these guys. I'm old enough that some of them weren't even alive, but I think they bought into that, that these moments matter, and it's something that they will remember for the rest of their lives.

On Significance of this win

HEUPEL: Yeah, it continues to put our brand, the style of football, and it's a legacy moment for the guys that are here that are graduating, but it's a springboard for us moving forward.

Again, our brand is out in front of everybody. I think we've beaten three out of the last four national champions during the course of this season. 11-win season, which hasn't been done since 2001. There's so many positive things, so much momentum inside of our program that the entire country, our players, our fan base, recruits, can see the trajectory of where Tennessee is and where it's going. Tonight is a big night.

Q. For Josh, Joe was sort of filling in for Hendon, Squirrel for Jalin, Aaron making plays that Jeremy would make during the year. You have three guys here that all stepped forward. What's the philosophy that you have where you can plug and play and still stay at this elite level?

HEUPEL: Next man up. You can phrase it however you want to. That's not coach speak. We talk about it. We live it every day. We talk about competing the right way and preparing for your opportunity. You don't know when it's coming.

We've got young guys that continue to get better. I like the fact that our guys love being in the building. They love learning and growing. They enjoy who they're doing it with. It allows us to continue to take strides, individually and then collectively as a football team. Where we started and where we are now in that way is so different.

We've got good young players. We're losing some really good veteran guys, obviously, but the future is freaky bright for Tennessee football.

Q. Can you talk about why your defense was so effective tonight and what some of the game plan was that you executed?

HEUPEL: Obviously there was a ton of pressure, multiple in our fronts. I thought we did a good job against the run game. End of the first half got a little bit tired, they hit some on us, a little bit in the third quarter. But multiple coverages on the back end, and we played better gap integrity. We tackled better in space, and we were better in our coverage, not perfect. Obviously the PIs were disappointing on our part, but continued to fight and compete.

Great red zone defense, situational football tonight. You've got to get points when you're in the red zone, you need to get sevens, and defensively we found a way to tighten up when they were on the plus side of the 50, and on the field goals they didn't make many of their attempts, and found a way to get off the field. Created turnovers, too.

Q. Kind of going off of that, the Tigers were held without a touchdown for just the second time this season in the first half. Obviously a lot has been made about Clemson's top-notch defense. Do you think people kind of counted you guys out in that way?

HEUPEL: I think our defensive players continue to grow. We had guys that were playing in the middle part of our defense, more reps than they had been during the course of the season. It's a prideful group. We continue to get better. There's some youth back there.

The fact that we had more health in the secondary with more opportunities to practice allowed those guys to go out and play in a better way. Throughout the course of the season, training camp, last spring, just those guys didn't -- they missed a lot of opportunities to improve, and I thought they got better during the course of this last month after the end of the regular season.

Q. On the field afterwards I heard you say the best is yet to come. That seems to be a mentality you've had throughout your tenure here. How often do you preach that to the guys in the room, and where do you think that comes from for you?

HEUPEL: Well, I just know that where we started, where we've gotten to, but there's so much left out there for us. It's in individual habits, it's in us continuing to improve in communication as coaches, refining what we're doing inside of our building, as we continue to develop depth inside of our program, recruit.

One of the great lessons, I said this to the football team after the game tonight, is two years ago there was so much outside noise that wasn't necessarily positive, and none of those guys paid attention to it. They decided collectively and individually to go accomplish something, and they worked for it.

If you set your mind to something and you work, you really can go up and accomplish anything. That's a great lesson for this football program, but it's a great lesson for these guys as they move into life.

As we continue to move forward, everybody inside that locker room understands there's a whole lot left out there for us that we can improve upon, that we can control, that can help us continue to climb as a program.

Q. Josh, Hendon Hooker Zooming in for meetings as he had his knee looked at and being a presence here, what has that meant and what has he meant in the last two years?

HEUPEL: Well, the fact that he's committed to this program and to his teammates, to Joe in some ways, that he wants to be a part of this experience, that he wants to finish his legacy here the right way, I think it speaks to everything of who he is. This program has climbed -- this is not taking away from anybody else inside of the building, me included, this doesn't happen without Hendon. I say that meaning -- these guys would say it, too. He's special. As you build a program, you've got to have somebody that's selling your message from inside that lives that message every day and gets the locker room headed in the right direction, and Hendon wasn't the only guy that did that, but he certainly was spearheading it.

There were a lot of guys that started moving us in the right direction from the inside out.

Q. Josh, when you describe it as freaky bright a few minutes ago, what does that look like to you? You have those freshmen, whether it be Squirrel, Josh Joseph, Elijah Herring, played a lot more reps and snaps tonight. What's that future look like in your mind?

HEUPEL: Yeah, playing electric football on the offensive side of the football field, scoring a bunch of points, defensively being aggressive, fearless, ferocious, and being the best defense in the country, and having that same mentality on special teams. Like we're just getting started in what we're developing here.

I love coming to work with these guys every single day. We continue to recruit, man. Tonight our brand is in front of everybody again on a national stage. It was a primetime game, and they got a chance to see who we are, how we play, how we compete together, the connection, the energy, and man, I think someone wants to play an exciting brand of football and have more fun than they can imagine, man, this is a great place to come compete on Rocky Top, and an unbelievable fan base.

Q. Josh, what do the next few weeks look like for you? After the season is over, a lot of changes, you've got hires to do, rosters, who's coming back, that kind of stuff. Can you walk us through that?

HEUPEL: Yeah, I was going to try to enjoy this one. Thanks for ruining it. (Laughter.) I want to enjoy a couple days with my family while I push forward on some of the problems or the issues that you already talked about. We've got recruiting the 4th through the 8th and we'll move forward on staff and all those things here as the beginning of January unfolds.

Q. Josh, you said that getting back in the rhythm of calling plays wasn't going to be an issue. Was it?

HEUPEL: No. First of all, we've got a great staff. Joey Halzle does a fantastic job, Glen Elarbeedoes a fantastic job. Those guys have been with us forever. Tonight we probably weren't in great balance early on, but some of that was what they were doing on the defensive side of the football.

Q. Let's talk about some of the greatest memories that you have from this season because there are a lot of them.1COMMENTS

HEUPEL: Yeah, man, you think back about this season with this group of guys, finishing it the way that we did here will certainly be a great memory. Some of the huge wins during the course of the season, inside Neyland Stadium, Florida, Alabama. As much as anything, though, you really do remember just the daily interaction and the journey that you're on with these guys every single day, in the meeting rooms, out on the practice field, eating dinner with these guys.

I talk to them a lot about it because in my playing days, when I look back on those days, it's not just the playing that you remember. A lot of it's just the small interaction, the moments that you get a chance to hang out with your brothers. It's been a really special journey here with these guys this year.