Following the end of the Jeremy Prutt (HC) and Phillip Fulmer (AD) era for Vol Football, the University of Tennessee moved quickly to get new people hired in those spots. The first big domino to fall was the hiring of former UCF athletic director Danny White, who wound up hiring former UCF coach Josh Heupel as the Volunteers’ next head coach.
While plenty of people drew the parallels to White and Heupel’s previous relationship at UCF, Heupel was brought in to reinvigorate Tennessee Football’s offense after a stagnant stretch under Pruitt. Heupel was known for having a dynamic, up-tempo offense with the Knights, and part of that was also thanks to offensive coordinator Alex Golesh.
Heupel brought Golesh with him from UCF to Tennessee to keep continuity on his staff. But the two offensive masterminds quickly realized that they would need to evolve in a big way to find success in the ultra-talented SEC landscape.
Golesh, now the head coach at Auburn, spoke about this transition during the Cole Cubelic Show last week.
“We go to Tennessee and Heup’s biggest thing was, hey, if everything we’ve just done (at UCF), if we don’t change, we’re going to get blown up,” Golesh said. “And I’m like, what do you mean? And he’s like, listen, this league – one, we don’t have better players than everybody now. Two, this league, they have corners that can play press-man every snap. Which is like, alright, I get that, so we’ve got to move bodies, we’ve got to stack bodies, we’ve got to create leverages in different ways. He’s like, oh, and by the way, flip some games on. These pass rushers are unlike anything you’ve ever seen in your life. I’m like, no man, I coached in the Big Ten, I coached in the Big 12, I’ll be alright.”
“And look at that 2021 Georgia defense for reference, look at ’21 Alabama defense for reference. Heck, look at South Carolina defensively that year. Every team in this league has freak EDGE rushers and have corners that can cover. Oh, and by the way, the linebackers, they can run and hit. That’s where this league was different. And so Heup said you’ve got to change. We’ve got to change. And forced me, us, our offensive staff, to take another step and change.”
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Heupel and Golesh, and with the Vols’ offensive staff in the early years, did a lot to put the up-tempo, spread out offense on the map. But as time has gone on and different players have come through the program, even with Golesh departing after the 2022 season, Tennessee’s offense has had to continue to change, adapt, and evolve.
“You look at Tennessee, now is really the first time I’ve had a chance to study them, this spring,” Golesh said on Cubelic’s show. “They don’t look anything like they looked when I was there.”
While Heupel has key philosophies that carry as the through-line between adaptations, the Vols’ offense has seen big changes over the last few years. It’s something that former Tennessee wide receiver Chris Brazzell spoke about during his pre-draft process from his years in Knoxville in 2024 and 2025.
“Everybody knows Tennessee has the run-and-gun, which they’re right, I’m not going to sit here and lie,” Brazzell said after being drafted and signed by the Panthers. “2024 year, I’ve said it a lot, that was a lot of run-and-gun. But this year, if you really watch my film, you know I was running dang near every route in the playbook. Every route I’ve ran here (at Carolina), I ran at Tennessee. There’s not a route here that I have not ran. Tennessee is definitely evolving the playbook, they’re getting more pro style, more friendly. So, yeah, I haven’t really ran a route here that I hadn’t ran at Tennessee.”
With Tennessee now on track to have their fifth different starting quarterback in the last five years, Heupel and his staff will continue tweaking the offense to best fit their personnel. We’ll see what that looks like when Tennessee hits the field this fall.
Check out Alex Golesh’s full quote on the Cole Cubelic Show below:
