JD PicKell: Revealing the biggest advantage of Tennessee’s up-tempo offense

Under head coach Josh Heupel, the Tennessee Volunteers have become known for their explosive and high-speed offense. In many ways, it’s the team’s calling card and it’s given the Volunteers an identity under Heupel.

To put it simply, the Tennessee offense is designed to give quarterbacks answers before the snap. Heupel stretches the field horizontally. This forces the defense to stretch too, opening up the field. Add extreme tempo and the defense can’t adjust. Now, On3’s JD PicKell explained the biggest advantage that this gives the Volunteers.

“All of these elements, make for a higher percentage of execution for the quarterback,” PicKell said. “But, also, here’s why they say quarterback friendly for the up-tempo piece. It makes for an easier picture.”

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Essentially, the Tennessee defense makes teams play it straight up. There isn’t time between plays to try and trick the offense and by stretching the field horizontally, defenses can only cover the inside or the outside. This determines where the ball then goes.

All of this, as PicKell explained, makes things easier on the quarterback.

“Because you don’t get the luxury of disguising blitzes or trying to misalign guys or trying to be tricky with your defense when we’re going so quickly. So, as a quarterback, when you can’t be tricky with your defense, I can just process what I see. I can kind of take it at face value. It’s an easier picture for me to read pre-snap,” PicKell said.

“I don’t have to worry about that corner blitz and more likely than not because you don’t have time to get that signal in or you don’t have that check necessarily built in when we’re going up-tempo. Just not a good way to live. You can do it, but it’s a little bit risky and, again, easier picture for us to diagnose as the offense.”

Josh Heupel expects the wide receivers to be electric

The quarterbacks are going to capture headlines at Tennessee. However, those quarterbacks are going to need help from the wide receivers. Luckily, Josh Heupel thinks those receivers are going to be electric this season.

“Four of [our] top receivers weren’t playing today. Three of them would certainly be able to play if it was a normal game week. We’ve been banged up a little bit throughout the course of it…[And] there has been extra pressure applied to those guys because of the reps,” Heupel said.

“That group as a whole has been really good in what they’ve done over the course of spring ball…[I] anticipate that being an electric group when we get to the fall. They’re long, they’re competitive, they have speed. They have a pretty good understanding of what we’re doing right now offensively. We’re going to need them to play at a really high level as we get into the fall. The guys that have been playing have absolutely competed extremely hard throughout the course of spring ball….I can’t say enough about what that group has done under Coach [Kelsey] Pope’s direction.”