Photos: Tennessee Athletics
In July, a lot of us said 8-4 and felt honest saying it. Some of you said 9-3. Vegas hung 7.5. Freshman quarterback. New defense. Nine SEC games. Texas was the loss you could live with.
Then Saturday happened, and the same people started talking like the season was already dead.
That flip does not make sense. A three point loss to No. 1 is not a surprise if you were telling the truth in the summer. Faizon Brandon is still 18. The season starting did not add two years. He did not walk into Neyland as a third year starter. You do not get veteran timing out of a kid who spent the day getting hit.
The tape is uglier than the score.
After the game, rolling the pocket felt like the obvious answer. More screens felt like the obvious answer. Then you watch the tape. You want to roll Faizon Brandon into those Texas edge rushers when Tennessee could not block them standing still? You want to live on screens when Texas rushed three or four and still got home? They were not going to get caught in a blitz, because they did not have to blitz. The pressure was coming anyway.
There is still a piece of Josh Heupel that is not as loose as he used to be. That is fair to say. The old version of this offense took more swings. This version looks tighter, and some of that is on him.
The bigger truth is older than Heupel’s play sheet. If you cannot block, you cannot run an offense. People saw how bad that line was and still wanted to blame the quarterback or the coach. You can nitpick both. I would not blame you. The point still stands. That offensive line played awful, and it ends there.
I do not see this group getting fixed in October. This is a portal problem. It might be an offensive line coach problem too. You can patch a series. You cannot invent five guys who can hold up against a real front.
That is the program question, and it is a fair one. How does Tennessee roll into a season with a line this bad? How is year six still starting an 18 year old at quarterback? The staff swung at the big portal names this offseason and missed. The fan base saw that in real time. If you do not get the players, do not expect the results. If you want to hit this coaching staff, hit them for that offseason. The kind of money Tennessee has should not be swinging and missing like that.
None of that means you burn the year down on September 26.
This is not a speech about giving Heupel all the time in the world. Heupel has to start winning more of these big games. Year six still has to look like a program that can block and recruit the gaps it failed to fill. If this line looks the same against weaker fronts and Tennessee starts dropping those games, then we revisit. Do not overreact to one day against a defense you will not see again unless this season takes a very positive turn.
If 8-4 or 9-3 was good enough in July with this quarterback and this roster, one expected loss to No. 1 does not change the math. Be pissed at the line. Be mad at the offseason.
Do not rewrite your own preseason because the punch you already circled actually landed.