Joey Halzle discusses relationship with Josh Heupel, why he's not afraid to speak his mind

Tennessee football charged back into the national spotlight last season with its best team in recent memory, and primarily thanks to an unstoppable offensive system ran by head coach Josh Heupel and offensive coordinator Alex Golesh. Heupel is (hopefully) just getting started in Knoxville and is looking to build on his immense success through two years with the program. However, in year three, he’ll be without Golesh, who just took the head coaching job down at USF.

In need of a new head of his offense, Heupel went to a trusted in-house option and the man who led Hendon Hooker to bounteous two-year success with the Volunteers — and that was quarterbacks coach Joey Halzle, who is now the QB coach and offensive coordinator. According to Halzle, the match between he and Heupel has always worked because the two are comfortable with one another and unafraid to speak their minds when it comes to football.

“Like, we have that trust where we can — like, he can say things to me, I can say things to him and we both know that what the other person’s intent actually is. You know what I’m saying?” Halzle said at a recent spring press conference. He added that they may disagree but the dialogue is always positive.

“Like, no one’s trying to cut somebody down or trying to be, you know, disrespectful in any type of way. It’s, ‘hey, this is how I see it and this is what I feel the information that needs to get conveyed to you.’ And whether it’s going from me to him or him to me it’s always received that way.”

This isn’t their first rodeo together, either, as Heupel was once a quarterbacks coach himself for Oklahoma when Halzle was a QB there in the late 2000’s. With so much history with one another, there’s just a familiarity between the two that really works.

“We’ve been together for so long, we have that relationship, we understand that both of us have the best of intentions for the other person. So now, we can just communicate and have that relay of information. It’s free-flowing. There’s no — like, I hope he takes this the right way or I hope he doesn’t see this — there’s no walking on eggshells, it’s just he says he wants communication in the building, so that that’s what he gets.”

Losing Alex Golesh is massive, no doubt. But Tennessee fans have to feel as good as they can in a post-Golesh world knowing they have one of his underlings and someone who is lock-step with Josh Heupel.