Recruiting Site Ranks Josh Heupel No. 5 Among SEC Coaches
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I'm not sure Tennessee fans could be much happier with where head coach Josh Heupel has Tennessee right now. The Vols completely exceeded expectations in 2022 by winning ten regular season games, a New Year's 6 Bowl, and having a legitimate shot at getting to the SEC Championship. After the tremendous season, 247Sports ranked Heupel No. 5 in their SEC head coach Rankings.
Heupel was ranked behind Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, Brian Kelly, and Lane Kiffin. I think there's an argument for Heupel to be ahead of Kelly and Kiffin at the moment, but I completely understand why he's behind those two as well as the two giants in Saban and Smart. Of course, Kelly won the SEC West in just his first season at LSU, and Kiffin won 10 games at Ole Miss two seasons ago for just the first time in program history.
In his second year in the program, Heupel completely transformed what the Vols had been in previous years under both Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt. The Vols even climbed up to number 1 in the college football playoff rankings pretty deep into the season. While there was still some unfamiliarity in the SEC with Heupel and his offense, Heupel should get all the credit in the world for installing an offense that was fooling SEC-caliber coaches and players. Heupel managed to build an extremely successful system with many players he didn't recruit. He was able to design an offense that played right into his teams' skill sets, and then the players went out and executed better than most teams in the country.
While Heupel's offense was fantastic last season, I imagine teams will begin to figure out how to slow it somewhat down. Anything in football that is unique, whether that is a player or system, gets countered eventually, at least to an extent. Despite that, Heupel has begun to bring in better players than he's had at Tennessee, grabbing a top-10 class in 2023. They also are sitting at number 8 in the 2024 cycle after a commitment from running back Peyton Lewis. Overall, another 10-win season would surely move Heupel at least into the top 4 of those rankings. The SEC is the best conference in college football, and coaches are often the driving force behind many of these programs' successes. With the talent Tennessee is bringing in, there's no doubt Heupel will be winning College Football Playoff games soon enough.
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