7:30 AM
Velus Jones Jr., Tennessee's do-it-all wide receiver and return specialist, hopped into an app.
The driver had no idea who was in the backseat.
The conversation turned to football. The Vols had just lost a heartbreaker to Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin, an electric environment at Neyland Stadium marred by a 20-minute stop for debris being thrown onto the field. The Vols could have been working on a three-game SEC winning streak if a few questionable calls had gone their way that night.
Even though we lost to Ole Miss, he kept talking about how excited he was to watch Tennessee football again and that it hadn't been like that in a long time. "You could hear it in his voice, talking about the impact Heupel had made in one year, how the fans checkerboarded Neyland, and how we were thriving on offense."
The driver peered into the mirror and saw his eyes widen.
"You're Velus Jones, right?" he asked.
The SEC's Co-Special Teams Player of the Year nodded and flashed a big smile. The conversation went into a frenzy from there.
It was a ride that only ended for Jones what this season has meant to so many Tennessee fans, who have been waiting a long time for a return to the glory days.
Jones said he took a picture with him when he got out of the car. I told him there was a lot more life left after he thanked me for bringing Tennessee football back to life.
Tennessee's program was on life support a year ago. The Vols had lost three times in four years, coming off a 3-7 season. An internal investigation into alleged NCAA rules violations, the scope of which university chancellor Donde Plowman later referred to as "stunning" and "shocking", and Tennessee was looking for its sixth head coach in 14 seasons after Jeremy Pruitt was fired for cause. Phillip Fulmer retired as athletic director after 33 scholarship players left the program or entered the transfer portal. There was no reason to believe that Heupel's first season as a head coach would be a success, as he was a finalist for the Steve Spurrier Award.
"There was a lot of noise about how bad it would be, and there were many unknowns," Carvin said. It seemed like a different teammate was leaving each day. We're sitting and wondering if we should leave or stick it out.
The guys who decided to stay fell in love with playing for the University of Tennessee again because of the culture of trust created by Coach Heupel and the rest of the coaches.
Not to mention a lot of reality.
Josh Heupel's steady demeanor and blend of positivity, consistency and iron-clad accountability has provided a calming effect at a place that has been the antithesis of calm.
Danny White, who hired Josh Heupel at UCF and then hired him again at Tennessee, said that Heupel doesn't get flustered and that he is one of his strengths.
He comes to campus every day and works on his plan. I'm not sure if I've ever seen him stressed out. It's amazing how he approaches things.
Don't let that persona fool you, warns Tennessee defensive line coach Rodney Garner.
"He's competitive as hell, and when I say competitive, I mean competitive in everything we do," said one of five on-field assistants Heupel hired with SEC coaching/recruiting experience.
Tennessee may be one of the surprises of the SEC, especially given that the program was down to 69 scholarship players at one point this season, but Heupel isn't about to celebrate that the Vols have a chance to win more than seven games in a season for only the fourth The app is for the ESPN and Disney channels.
He promised the players that he would keep the job.
Heupel said that they never put a ceiling on what they could or could not do. That was a large part of their buying in. These guys were my friends. I chose Tennessee. They chose Tennessee. They didn't pick me. The common ground was that they were all here before.
"Our kids knew we had a chance to win, and we never deviated from that."
Heupel knew what he was going to get at Tennessee after leading UCF to a 28-8 record in three seasons. Over the past decade, the Vols have gone through more head football coaches, athletic directors and chancellors/presidents than they have won key football games. White said that the narrative that Heupel was the Vols' choice after several others turned down the job is false.
White said he cast a wide net and went full circle as he worked through the search, and he kept coming back to Josh. We talked to a lot of different people, but to say that Josh took this job because other people didn't like it is not accurate and not fair to him.
It didn't take White long before he was introduced to the range of emotions associated with the Vol.
People were angry and frustrated in White's first couple of months. "It wasn't everyone, but I think our fans see a lot of the same things I see after Year 1 -- a really healthy culture, kids who play hard and a coaching staff that's getting the most out of them." We're not as good as we're going to be, but we've bounced back quickly.
The heavy lifting is still to come.
The head coach at Tennessee would always be judged on how he did against Alabama, Florida and Georgia, and the Vols needed to beat those three teams at least as much as they beat the Vols.
Tennessee is 4-38 against those three teams going back to the start of Fulmer's final season. The Vols have lost to all three teams in each of the last five seasons and have lost by an average margin of 26 points per game.
Carvin said that the team never quits fighting, never quits competing. When we had a bad quarter or half, we came back the next game ready to go, and we were close to being a nine-win team. Those are the games that will help us grow as a program.
Keeping elite players will help. Carvin, Hooker, and Tillman will return for next season. The three could have turned pro but chose to stay. After coming over from Virginia Tech, Hooker was one of college football's most impactful transfers. He finished the regular season with a passing efficiency of 3, which was third in the nation.
The transfer portal is being mined again by the Vols, and Heupel's first recruiting class produced several key additions, particularly on the defensive line. When Heupel arrived, Tennessee was behind personnel-wise.
Heupel faced similar challenges as a player. He jokes that pheasant hunting is the only reason to go to Aberdeen, South Dakota. His high school basketball team played for a state title, but his high school football team struggled in both his sophomore and junior seasons.
Heupel said that his senior season, they made a deep run in the playoffs.
When Heupel arrived at Oklahoma in 1999, Bob Stoops' first season as coach was similar. Stoops was the fourth head coach in six seasons for the Sooners, who had suffered through five straight non-winning seasons. Heupel was the runner-up in the Heisman and the Sooners won the national title.
Heupel said that trying to build something was one of the greatest experiences in his life. It's rare that you can take over a historic program with all the tools and resources we have here and build it back in a unique way.
Heupel could sense the skepticism among the players. He was hired on January 27th, a week after White was hired as athletic director.
Jones said they didn't know what to expect. Football hadn't been fun for us.
Heupel met with the players for about an hour and a half. He introduced himself, went over his core values, and most of the rest of the time was an open dialogue.
The players and coaches in the room said that accountability was sorely lacking within the program.
Carvin said that before Heupel arrived, the guys were ready to leave. They would leave after practice. Guys want to stay and watch film. Guys know what the expectations are on and off the field.
In addition to his time at Tennessee, he has also been the coach at Georgia and Georgia. The players were looking for direction.
In the first two weeks, I missed more meetings, class sessions, and meetings than I did in the previous 31 years. We weren't going to be a bunch of people.
It was not trivial to eat all three meals in the football complex or to try to get to know your teammates, not just the guys in your position group.
Heupel said that the habits that you have outside of the game matter inside the game. That was a big part of the change in Tennessee football.
Heupel's first season was not a good one for the Vols. They faced five of the top 22 teams and four of the top 12. They faced three quarterbacks who finished first, third and seventh in the Heisman Trophy voting, including Alabama's Bryce Young, Pittsburgh's Kenny Pickett and Ole Miss' Matt Corral.
Tennessee is 19 points away from setting a school record for most points in a season, which was established in 1993 during Fulmer's first full season. The Vols have scored at least 45 points in six of their 12 games, and their After scoring 215 in 2020, 314 in 2019, 273 in 2018?
"I know that a lot of guys are going to want to play in this style of offense and play for a coach who believes in them the way coach Heupel does," said Jones, who started his career at USC before transferring to Tennessee.
The state of Tennessee will be one of the next steps. The Vols signed one of the top 15 in-state prospects in the class of 2022, according to the rankings.
Heupel said that it was harder to recruit in state this year because of the NCAA cloud and noise. We continued to build on our gains from the spring to the summer and into the fall and winter.
The university announced in November that it had finished its internal investigation and would not impose a bowl ban, although it did plan to impose other penalties. The university has yet to receive a notice of allegations from the NCAA, according to sources.
The way the players adapted to Heupel's style of tough love will be his defining memory from this first season.
The saying in the building is that you coach from passion. Heupel said that you don't coach from emotion.
The Big Orange Nation wants more next season. There are billboards reading "#eVOLution22" in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville.
Heupel said that the guys started something that we can build on.
Jones won't be around in 2022, but he's excited to see what the future holds.
This is just the beginning.
