SEC Season Grades: Tennessee Volunteers
01/25/2025
By Chris Marler
Season in a sentence
Don’t let a blowout loss in the College Football Playoff distract from the fact that the Vols were one of three SEC teams to get there.
Three Highs
- Making the CFP
The Vols made their first College Football Playoff and, seemingly, did so with ease. While three other SEC teams were busy pleading their case to the committee—and anyone else that would listen—the Vols were secured with the No. 9 seed.
- Beating Alabama
Tennessee hadn’t beaten Alabama in 15 years until 2022. Now, they’ve won back-to-back games in Neyland Stadium against the Tide. This year’s win came, despite three turnovers in the first half. The Vols flat out beat Bama into submission.
- Dylan Sampson
Most people thought the offensive highlight for this season would come in the form of freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava. However, running back Dylan Sampson was the offensive MVP. Sampson finished the season leading the SEC with 1491 rushing yards and 22 touchdowns.
Three Lows
- The Arkansas Loss
Arkansas hadn’t beaten a top five opponent at home since 1999. Ironically, that was also against Tennessee. It’s still puzzling how the Vols lost to 6-6 Arkansas, and even more baffling how one of the worst defenses in the SEC held them to just 14 points.
- Cracking the code to Kirby Smart
Tennessee has been one of the best offenses in college football under Josh Heupel. They’ve scored 20 points or more in 43 of Heupel’s 52 games as the head coach. However, they’ve never scored more than 17 points against Georgia in the four meetings between Kirby Smart and Heupel. Even crazier is that Tennessee has scored first in all four of those meetings.
- Tennessee Takeover in Columbus
To say Vol fans were excited to make the trip to the Horseshoe for their first round game against Ohio State is the understatement of the century. They deserve credit for making the trip in the frigid temperatures, but the end result was a lopsided loss to the eventual national champions.
The Offense
Tennessee’s offense has been one of the best offenses in college football for four straight years. However, the perception of what makes their offense successful has always been a little misguided. That’s partially because of how explosive the 2022 offense was with Hendon Hooker at quarterback.
Josh Heupel’s offense is predicated off the run first and foremost. The passing game does take a lot of deep shots, but for it to be successful the downfield accuracy has to be elite. That’s exactly why it was so elite in 2022: Hendon Hooker was the most accurate deep-ball passer in program history—even surpassing Peyton Manning.
Nico Iamaleava may still reach that level. The former five-star recruit certainly carried that level of hype when he took over at quarterback. However, as we saw last year with Joe Milton, having elite arm talent doesn’t necessarily translate into accuracy on throws 30, 40, and 50 yards downfield.
The good news is that even without the deep ball efficiency, Tennessee’s offense was elite this season. They finished top three in the conference in scoring, rushing, and total offense. Dylan Sampson was the offensive player of the year at running back and the Vols still have a lot of young talent they can lean on beyond the 2024 season. The biggest question moving forward is whether Josh Heupel’s offense will be good enough to win crucial games and succeed against elite defenses.
Offensive Grade: B+
The Defense
The biggest misconception about any team in the country this season was that Tennessee was a top-five or top-10 team solely because of its offense. The Tennessee defense was not only good this season, it was historically good for most of it. Through their first nine games, they didn’t allow more than 20 points to any opponent. TTo put that in perspective: Only two other SEC teams in the last 20 years have achieved that—2011 Alabama and 2021 Georgia. Both are widely regarded as two of the best defenses in college football history.
Defensive Grade: A-
Overall Grade
The disappointment of losing by 25 in the College Football Playoff shouldn’t dampen the spirits of Tennessee fans too much. Yes, it was a disappointing end to the season. However, it speaks volumes about the current state of the program that they were never on the outside looking in to make the 12-team playoff once November began.
That should only continue moving forward with the recruiting classes coming to Knoxville and a booster base that is more than happy to make it feel like ‘98 again—the last time the Vols won a football national title. The 2024 season was a tremendous success from start to finish. With the same SEC opponents on the schedule next year, Georgia at home, and Nico Iamaleava entering his third year in Josh Heupel’s offense, 2025 has the potential to be even better.
Overall Season Grade: A-