DALLAS — Tennessee enjoyed a season as an SEC darling when it upset Alabama in 2022 en route to an 11-2 record, its best since an identical mark in 2001, capped by a 31-14 thrashing of Clemson in an all-orange Orange Bowl.
Consecutive wins over Florida, LSU and Alabama with an average score of 43 points per game had fans of the Power T juiced about the future.
Two seasons later, the Volunteers have been nudged out of the “up and coming” conversation in the nation’s toughest conference by Missouri and Ole Miss, which were both picked to finish ahead of Tennessee in voting at SEC media days last week.
Tennessee was picked to finish seventh in the 16-team SEC, perhaps allowing the Volunteers to slip into stealth contender mode.
Fourth-year Coach Josh Heupel hyped the buy-in from his club from the podium at SEC media days.
“The care factor that they have for each other and the program, 20 wins over the last couple of years, top 3 in the league, (it’s) the best that it’s been in 20 years on Rocky Top,” Heupel said. “As good as it’s been, the future is extremely bright, and we’re in a race to get where we need to extremely quickly.”
Heupel and his club have reason to think another surge is in store this year. Insiders believe quarterback Nico Iamaleava (pronounced ee-ah-MAH-LAY-ah-va) is better suited to make the snap decisions required in Heupel’s up-tempo attack than Joe Milton was last year when the Volunteers went 9-4 and finished third in the SEC East.
Iamaleava, the 6-6, 215-pound redshirt freshman from Long Beach, Calif., got work in four regular season games last season, then he earned MVP honors with his production in a 35-0 win over Iowa in the Citrus Bowl. The big right-hander accounted for 178 total yards and four touchdowns against the stingy Hawkeye defense. Iamaleava tied Joshua Dobbs’ school bowl record with three rushing touchdowns.
“I think a big thing was him getting to play in the bowl game,” senior center Cooper Mays said. “I think it’s built a little bit of an aura of confidence around him.
“You know somebody can be talented and everything, but until you play and get on the field and play the whole game, you don’t really have that confidence yet. I think he’s kind of took that momentum from that win and built from it.”
Iamaleava was reported by The Athletic to have landed an NIL agreement valued at about $8 million, a deal that drew intense scrutiny from the NCAA. However, that issue died down last year and Iamaleava appears ready to take the starter’s reins.
“We want him to hit the ground running,” Heupel said. “He’s a young quarterback. Played really well in the bowl game. He’s going to continue to grow. Through all of his experiences here throughout the course of the season, he’s only going to continue to get better from all of those. But we expect him to play at a really high level from the very beginning, and we need that from him.
The running game should be in decent shape behind Mays and fellow returning starters Javontez Spraggins and John Campbell on the right side.
Dylan Sampson, who scored four touchdowns in the 2023 season opener against Virginia then capped the year with 133 rushing yards against Iowa, is in position to take over from 1,000-yard tailback Jaylen Wright. His backups, sophom*ore Cam Seldon and freshman Peyton Lewis, missed most of spring with injuries so depth could be a factor.
The receiving corps welcomes back standouts Squirrel White, Bentonville High School product Chas Nimrod, Bru McCoy and Dont’e Thornton, plus tight end Ethan Davis.
White caught a team-high 67 passes for 803 yards and 2 touchdowns, while Nimrod, a 6-3 sophom*ore, had 19 catches for 194 yards and 1 touchdown.
Potential concerns for the Volunteers are the depth at tailback plus the combination of youth and inexperience in the secondary, which lost 11 players, including all four starters, to the transfer portal or the NFL Draft.
The defensive front should be a strength, led by 6-5, 242-pound defensive end James Pearce, one of the nation’s top pass rushers. A preseason All-SEC first-team selection by the media, Pearce had 14.5 tackles for loss, more than half his season total of 28, plus 10 sacks and 16 quarterback hurries last season.
“In order for us to grow, we have to continue to create turnovers,” 320-pound defensive tackle Omari Thomas said. “We need to create way more turnovers than we have been.”
The Volunteers tied for fourth in the SEC in turnover margin last year with 18 takeaways and 12 turnovers.
Seventh-year linebacker Keenan Pili, whose college career began at BYU in 2016, returns from a triceps injury that knocked him out for the season in last year’s opener. Pili, 26, was selected as a team captain last year after transferring from the Cougars.
“Just excited to come back and play,” said Pili, who has been granted two extra years due to injuries, plus the covid-19 exemption. “It means everything. I don’t take the role lightly, the things that come with middle linebacker and the things I’m expected to do.
“I’ve been around, so I’m excited to play another year and to be here.”
The Volunteers have one of the most bizarre schedules in the nation. They play their first two conference games on the road at Oklahoma and Arkansas before returning to Knoxville to play all four of their SEC home games.
The SEC showed its sense of humor by giving Oklahoma its first SEC game against the Volunteers and Heupel, who led the Sooners to a win in the 2001 BCS National Championship Game as their quarterback.
Heupel spent 11 years coaching at Oklahoma as a graduate assistant (2003-04), quarterbacks coach (2006-10) and co-offensive coordinator (2011-14) overlapping eight of those years with longtime Oklahoma assistant and current head coach Brent Venables.
“Obviously Oklahoma, my experience there, I think it’s an exciting time to be in this league and really unique that I’ll have an opportunity to go back to Oklahoma,” Heupel said.
“It’ll be a completely different viewpoint on that Saturday afternoon or evening. … But it’ll be unique for me. (I’ve) got family that still lives back there. A lot of friends, teammates, coaches that I stay in contact that coached me while I was there, and obviously administration too. So it’ll be a unique Saturday.”
Heupel will also be back in Fayetteville for the first time since the Missouri team he served as offensive coordinator racked up 696 total yards, 448 passing yards and 35 first downs behind quarterback Drew Lock in a 48-45 win over the Razorbacks on Nov. 24, 2017.
“Yeah, always a great venue,” Heupel said of Reynolds Razorback Stadium. “Fanbase is extremely passionate. An early conference game, on the road, I know that that will be a big test when we get to that Saturday.”
This story was the eighth in a series previewing SEC football teams.
