Tennessee's growth under Josh Heupel already showing early this season
Tennessee played well enough to leave Pittsburgh with a marquee road win on Saturday, but there's no denying that the Volunteers were close to blowing it.
Most teams that have a muffed punt return, a punt blocked deep into their own territory, a fumble on their side of the 50-yard line, numerous dropped passes and overthrows, and multiple drive-killed penalties lose those games.
Tennessee didn't.
Although the Vols hurt themselves with all of those self-inflicted wounds, they locked in late in the game and ultimately came out on top in overtime against Pitt. Would Tennessee have won a game like that last season? Probably not.
That's the difference in last year's team – Josh Heupel's debut squad – and this season's club. From this time in 2021 to now in 2022, the growth of Tennessee's football program under the head coach is already evident. The Vols are trending in the right direction.
"The accountability that we have inside of our program, doing the right things in every area of your life, it shows up in how you play," Heupel said during Monday's press conference. "The mental toughness, physical toughness and the ability to strain when things aren't going your way, being relentless and playing together in all phases of the game.
"It's just the growth of individuals and the growth of our units together. All that adds up to us having the ability to fight and win a game in overtime like we played."
Reflecting back to this time last season, Tennessee was sitting at 1-1 with a sloppy win over Bowling Green and a tough loss to Pitt.
In the season opener against BGSU, the Vols held just a 14-6 lead at halftime in a game they were favored to win by 37 points. They still recorded a 38-6 victory, but it wasn't all that pretty. In the meeting with Pitt, Tennessee gave up 27 points in the second quarter and threw a late interception to seal the 41-34 defeat.
Fast forward to this season and the Volunteers are 2-0 and ranked No. 15 in the latest AP Top 25 poll. They dominated in this year's opener – winning 59-10 against Ball State – before getting the job done at Pitt.
Next up for Heupel's club? A meeting with an Akron team in a contest the Vols are favored to win by 47.5 points. Assuming that Tennessee will be 3-0 and ranked within the top-15 after this weekend, its next big test will come against Florida on Sept. 24 at Neyland Stadium.
While it's easy for the Vols to just go ahead and look forward to the Florida game, Heupel's team knows that it must first take care of business against Akron. That's their No. 1 priority right now.
"The challenge every week is really us," Heupel said. "Our preparation has to be consistent. Your process of how you approach and get to game day is what takes you to game day to play your best football. If you ever deviate from that plan and change it, you're setting yourself up for failure. We talked about that in the team meeting today.
"College football has always been this way, but certainly this past weekend and the first weekend, you see it. Everybody's got 85 (scholarship players) and they've got good coaching staffs, so you better prepare and be ready to compete in a really good way. Your competitiveness cannot deviate from week to week."
Tennessee and Akron are set to kickoff at 7 p.m. Saturday in Knoxville.
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