CBS Sports put together its annual hot seat rankings for every FBS head coach. That’s where Tennessee Volunteers head coach Josh Heupel landed with a ranking of 1.11. It places him in the ‘safe and secure’ range. There are only two SEC head coaches who have a ‘safer’ ranking as compared to Heupel. That’s Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart and Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian. But that does not mean that Heupel has the option to sit back and relax.

Heupel has a huge mess to clear. He has pulled the brakes on his former quarterback, Nico Iamaleava. And he doesn’t regret it at all. Heupel now counts highly on his new quarterback, Joey Aguilar, but the young chap is now going through a rough patch. So what’s the narrative that’s doing the rounds for Heupel?

CFB analyst Joel Klatt summed it up in the best possible way. “I didn’t love the whole Nico Iamaleava saga. So, Tennessee fans, where do we sit with Josh Heupel? I think it’s, ‘I like you, but’… like, we don’t have a quarterback anymore, and what are we doing?” Heupel’s quarterback luck is yet to favor. Aguilar comes off as the red flag after his completion rate witnessed a stark fall from 63.7% in 2023 to 55.9% in 2024 at Appalachian State. The looming doubt for Heupel was then doubled down by Cole Cubelic on the June 8 episode of the Jox 94.5 podcast. He shared, “I think the quarterback situation has forced us to dive into other things and we see, man, this part might not be close to where it was last year. This is going to be tough.”

Cubelic had one question for CBS Sports’ Bud Elliott: “Do you view Tennessee as being anything close to a playoff contender this year or is it a pretty big falloff?” Iamaleava has the potential to be one of those quarterbacks who can take a team to a whole other level. But the guy who played a big role in leading the Vols to the College Football Playoff isn’t around now. So, Elliott clearly stated the probability of Heupel’s boys punching the Playoff ticket.

“If they arrive a year early, and that does happen in college football sometimes, right? Like back when I was writing to Tomahawk Nation at the 2013 FSU team, Jimbo [Fisher] thought the 14 team was going to be it, right? And like the 13 team, just all kind of coalesced and arrived a year early. I don’t think they have a James in Knoxville this year, obviously,” Elliott replied.

“But in doing it, and obviously we released it yesterday. Go ball 24×7. Patrick Brown did a great job for us. He kind of thought it was more of like a ‘Hey, they weren’t super aggressive in the transfer portal.’ They were very aggressive in the retention aspect of the offseason because they liked a lot of their young pieces that they paid for. They decided to keep them. They think they’re on the right track with a lot of those guys to hit, but maybe this isn’t the year for them to make a run.” 

The Vols got stuck in an interesting spot in the cycle. They return a ton of talent on the defensive side. Heupel has returned three starters on offense. So their playoff hopes now hang on to the duration of their running game being functional. Heupel signed a few good talents for the offensive line, but they didn’t do much for the receiving corps. However, as of now, the Tennessee coach might be soaking in some happy vibes.

Josh Heupel gets lucky to share a seat with the elite

Josh Heupel was named to the 2025 Dodd Trophy Preseason Watch List. The preseason list has been curated by the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Foundation and Peach Bowl, Inc. And what better motivational juice for Heupel, who steps in his fifth season? The Tennessee head coach earned himself a spot among 26 coaches, including eight SEC coaches, on the list. Now, the award nominations are made based on certain parameters.

The award goes to the coach who acts as a magnet to attract success for their program. Not just success. The other parameters that make a good head coach, like scholarship and integrity, are also taken into account. After all, these make up for three pillars of Dodd’s coaching philosophy.

Heupel has already passed the quality check by reviving the Vols began in 2021. Projected to finish fifth in the SEC East, he turned the tables by leading the Vols to a 7-6 first-year campaign. It was topped by a 4-4 mark in conference play to take third place in the division. And how could we forget about the significant improvement in Tennessee’s offense under Heupel?

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Vols jumped 99 spots in scoring offense in the FBS rankings, going from 108th in the country in 2020 to seventh in 2021. However, when it came to the transfer portal, Josh Heupel miserably failed to fortify the fortress. As 247 Sports’ Patrick Brown shed light on the troubling scenes in the Vols camp. “So you just look at the roster breakdown. I think almost they’re going to end up with over 40 guys on this roster that are freshmen. Now there’s some redshirt guys in there too, and there’s also a lot of first and second year transfer guys, so they don’t have a lot of the this past team had a lot of sixth year guys, some seventh year guys.” With challenges ahead, the big question is whether Heupel can rally his squad and pull off a Playoff run next season.