JD PicKell: Breaking down Tennessee’s ‘QB friendly’ offense, impact on opponent

Tennessee boasted the best offense in the nation last season for a lot of reasons. Their scheme, though, is at the root of it all as On3’s JD PicKell says it’s an ideal system for quarterback success.

PicKell broke down and applauded the Volunteer’s offense during a recent edition of ‘The Hard Count’. He described Josh Heupel’s strategy as ‘quarterback-friendly’ because of the spacing they play with and how difficult it is for defenses to handle.

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“It is a quarterback-friendly offense. When you watch Tennessee on tape or you watch their broadcasts, they play with a lot of spacing. And spacing essentially can be summed up in when you watch where their wide receivers align on the screen? They are very much so spread out and it’s not uncommon to see the wide receivers lining up darn near on the sideline,” PicKell said. “Like, they’re trying to make the defense cover every single blade of grass. You get 53.3 yards of width to work with. Josh Heupel says cool. We’re gonna take advantage of all of them.”

“It gives wide receivers more real estate to work with. Again, the DB has to cover more space. In addition to that, more space means what? More room to get open and more space to throw the football,” continued PicKell. “It makes for nice throws, explosive plays, and touchdowns. So the spacing piece of this is one of the reasons why people like to throw the term ‘quarterback-friendly’ around Tennessee’s offense.”

He then went on to discuss the up-tempo style as the other key to quarterback proficiency on Rocky Top. To start, it just absolutely exhausts defenders as they try to cover what the Vols are doing play after play. He also added that, unless you want to burn a timeout, your defense gets ‘stuck’ out there.

“They go fast. Up-tempo, no-huddle, hurry-up. Whatever kind of label you want to throw on it. They’re snapping the football around every 20 seconds. So what does that do to a defense?,” asked PicKell. “One, the defense gets tired. It is hard to be in position when you are tired. It is hard to have all of your competitive juices at maximum level and all of your attributes maxed out when you’re huffing and puffing because Tennessee is running a whole heck of a lot of plays.

“The other thing that does to a defense? It is hard to be organized when the offense is going so quickly,” PicKell explained. “It’s hard to think clearly when things are happening so quickly. (That’s) another advantage for the offense.”

“(Plus), as a defense, man? You’re stuck. What do I mean by you’re stuck? You’re stuck in that personnel grouping until you either call timeout or Tennessee decides to substitute,” said PicKell. “You’re a prisoner to what Tennessee wants to do offensively at that point in time. (It’s) a beautiful part of the up-tempo offense.”

People can criticize UT’s offense for catering too much to their quarterbacks. It doesn’t matter to them as, considering their historic offensive numbers, they’re gonna keep on running it and, in turn, winning games because of it.