Why 'unrealistic 2025 expectations' are ruining the perception of Josh Heupel at Tennessee

Josh Pate took time to dispel the ridiculous notion that Tennessee coach Josh Heupel is on the hot seat in any way, shape or form. Of course, that hasn’t stopped a portion of Volunteers fans from alluding to that possibility after a 33-27 loss against Oklahoma on Saturday.

That dropped Tennessee to 6-3 (3-3 SEC) on the season and at least a couple of fans bring up to Pate a “conversation” that needed to be had Heupel. Pate pushed back on that notion, saying he believes there should be levels to hot seat talk and Heupel isn’t even close to the highest one.

“I got two texts last night from people whose opinions I kind of respect, except for last night,” he said. “These are Tennessee fans, mind you. They were like, ‘Is it time to have the conversation about Heupel?’ I’m like, ‘I’d be happy to have a conversation about Josh, what do you wanna know?’ They’re like, ‘No, I mean, we’re not saying we should fire him, but…’. Well, that sounds like you’re saying you should fire him. Even though you followed it with a but, it sounds like that’s where you’re trying to go with it. They’re like, ‘Well, no, it’s just something has to change here.’

“On the ladder of criticism in coaching, let’s just say we have 10 rungs and the 10th rung is ‘Fire this guy.’ You need to specify when you say ‘changes need to be made,’ are you talking about are you on rung three or four or five? Because there’s a long way to go between ‘This guy needs to make some changes’ versus ‘We need to fire this guy.’ And sometimes we just shave off all the rungs 4-9. It’s just either you’re on rung three or rung 10. That’s kind of the way it was presented to me last night.”

Heupel is in his fifth season in Knoxville and led the Vols to a College Football Playoff appearance this past season. He also has a 43-18 record in that span and has never finished a season below the .500 mark.

Pate continued his argument by saying that he believes some of the disappointment from this year comes from unrealistic preseason expectations from Tennessee fans. He reminded everyone of the challenges that Heupel was facing to enter this year, from losing quarterback Nico Iamaleava to having to replace several defensive stars.

He argued that Tennessee is still very much within reach of the 8-4 record that he predicted them to have at the beginning of the season. In fact, they could even do a bit better to finish 9-3 if they win out the remainder of the regular season.

“If you wanna say he needs to make some changes on his staff, OK,” Pate said. “I’m just gonna ask, because I do possess the ability and the right to zoom out to 50,000 feet here for a second: does anyone care to go back to July with me? Does anyone care to just recap what they thought about Tennessee coming into the season? Because we had a great big fight on this show right into this microphone, where I looked and I had the audacity to say, ‘This dude Josh Heupel, they’re losing a lot off of a good defense last year. This dude Josh Heupel just had his quarterback yanked from his roster after spring and went and got a guy who’s been fairly turnover prone in his career. Oh, and this guy’s also got some big time defensive injuries for the guys who are still there coming into the year. I feel like 8-4 is about right.’ Oh, man. They rained criticism down on me.

“Well, here’s the problem. People, I’m not hating on you. You oughta root for your team to win every game. What I’m saying is, some people who had, I think, unrealistic expectations for this team, are now getting mad at the team for not fulfilling on their unrealistic expectations. Tennessee is right in line to do what I thought they were gonna do. I had them as an 8-4 team. I thought it was a transition year. Called it a bridge year. I think they’ll be right back in the mix next year. Hot seat and Josh Heupel shouldn’t even be in the same sentence unless he is commenting on the hot seat about someone else.”