Tennessee hopes Nico Iamaleava is the real deal.
Matt Zemek, 16powers.com
The Tennessee Volunteers have entered a new era under head coach Josh Heupel. Before Heupel came along, Tennessee suffered for a prolonged period of time because it did not hire coaches who understood and respected the importance of a strong passing game. When Phil Fulmer won a national championship, college football was in the midst of various transitions, and it hadn’t yet become a sport where spread passing offenses were the norm and old-school football took a back seat. Tennessee’s 1998 national championship team with quarterback Tee Martin was a team built primarily around its defense. The 1998 Vols defeated archrival Florida, SEC Championship Game opponent Mississippi State, and national championship game foe Florida State with their defense carrying most of the workload. That was a defense-first team which fit well in the era it inhabited.
Fulmer gave Tennessee a lot of great football achievements, but when his career ran out of steam, several years into the new century, the Vols failed to replace him with coaches who were ready to adjust and adapt to the modern game. Derek Dooley, Butch Jones, and Jeremy Pruitt (cast aside Lane Kiffin, who was there for only one year) never did understand the importance of teaching a quarterback in a pass-first offense. Nick Saban showed at Alabama that he could adjust to modern football. Alabama offenses became very proficient in the passing game. Alabama beat Clemson for the 2015 national championship in a legitimate shootout. Several years later, Alabama won the SEC Championship Game 52-46 over Dan Mullen and the Florida Gators. That 2020 Bama team then won the national title with an offense which averaged nearly 50 points per game. The 2019 LSU Tigers had a spectacular offense and an elite passing game under Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow. They rode that offense to the national championship. Georgia’s passing game was able to win a shootout in the 2022 Peach Bowl against Ohio State, which paved the way for the Bulldogs’ repeat national title won shortly thereafter in the national championship game against TCU.
College football modernized and became a more offense-first, pass-friendly sport in the 21st century. Tennessee didn’t grasp this reality until it finally turned to Josh Heupel. Only then did the Vols finally embrace what a lot of successful programs had previously understood: The modern iteration of college football required a top-tier passing attack. Coaches and quarterbacks had to work together to create a lot more possibilities for a football team.
Coaches of the 1970s and 1980s relied on defense, field position, and the kicking game. Vince Dooley of Georgia and Pat Dye of Auburn carried forward what Bear Bryant and Johnny Vaught had established in previous decades. The old-time formula worked in a sport which centered around defense, running backs, and solid special teams. It was in the 1990s when we saw Steve Spurrier at Florida and Hal Mumme at Kentucky begin to transform the sport. Those changes didn’t fully take root all at once, but they began to become more pervasive in the sport, advanced by innovators such as Mike Leach, Rich Rodriguez, Chip Kelly, and Gus Malzahn. Over a decade into the new century, college football offense looked very different from how it did in 1998, the year of Tennessee’s most recent national title. If teams weren’t pursuing aggressive passing games and modernized schemes, they probably weren’t giving themselves the best possible chance of winning.
Tennessee – for over a decade – kept ignoring this central truth of college football. Only with the hire of Josh Heupel, who had developed very prolific offenses at UCF, did the Vols finally seem to realize what they were missing out on, and what they needed to create in Knoxville.
In 2022, we saw the fruits of this long-overdue change on Rocky Top.
Heupel molded a transfer from Virginia Tech named Hendon Hooker into a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate. The Vols had an aggressive offensive scheme and had the trigger man who could sling the ball down the field and run when he needed to. The Tennessee offense roared to life and memorably outdueled Alabama in a pure shootout, 52-49. The game validated the Vols’ decision to finally focus on offensive production and passing proficiency. The win was part of the validation, but the fact that they won a game with over 100 total points – and in which they gave up 49 – showed what was possible when a football program maxed out on the offensive side of the ball. The Vols beat Clemson in the Orange Bowl and finished in the top 10. Proof of concept existed. Hendon Hooker became a Tennessee legend.
In 2023, the Vols tried to replicate what they did in 2022, but Joe Milton wasn’t up for the job. Neither was the offensive line, which didn’t put Milton in a position to succeed. The approach was fine, but the personnel was not. Heupel’s ideas weren’t refuted, but his roster construction didn’t match the 2023 standard.
The Vols will try to get it right in 2024. Nico Iamaleava is a young and promising quarterback who will be given the keys to Heupel’s offense. A lot of commentators think he could be a star at Tennessee, but Iamaleava has to prove he is worth the hype. He has to make a Hendon Hooker-level imprint before he can be seen as the true answer for the Vols. The offensive line, which was not a tower of strength in front of Milton last year, has to be able to provide a level of support – especially in the early part of the season – which will enable Iamaleava to settle into the season. Tennessee has a challenging early-September game against a very tough North Carolina State defense. If the Vols can get past that obstacle, they should be able to make a run at the College Football Playoff. They have to play at Oklahoma and Georgia. They host Alabama. If they can win two of those three, they have a decent shot at the playoff. They will need their offense to play at or near the height of its capabilities. That means the quarterback has to be on top of his game.
The Vols now understand why an elite passing game matters. The question is if Nico Iamaleava can prove worthy of the expectations being placed upon him in Knoxville.
