Josh Heupel reveals Kwauze 'Pakk' Garland will miss 2023 season with injury

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said linebacker Kwauze “Pakk” Garland will miss the 2023 season. Garland suffered an injury last season against Ball State, and Heupel said that is what will keep him on the sidelines this year.

Garland went down with an upper-body injury in Week 1 of the 2022 season. He had one tackle in the game, which kicked off his redshirt junior year with the Vols.

“There’s one guy that won’t be with us this fall, Pakk Garland. Just from the injury last fall, hasn’t gotten himself in position where he’s cleared,” Heupel said Tuesday. “It’s not because he hasn’t been putting in the work. It’s just him and the process that he’s had to got through with that injury. He’ll be a part of our program, but will not be playing this fall.”

Garland has only played one full season of games at Tennessee when he made 12 appearances in 2021. That year, he had two tackles while mostly appearing on special teams.

Heupel is preparing for his third season on Rocky Top and is facing high expectations. Last year, Tennessee put together an impressive 11-2 record that included a win over Alabama at Neyland Stadium. But this season, Heupel has a chance to keep his fast-tracked rebuild going.

He shared how the process has gone so fast during SEC Media Days last month.

“Certainly when we got here there was so much going on outside of our program, and a lot of things that you couldn’t control,” Heupel said. “Control what you can. Make sure that you focus and harness all your energy from your staff to your players, put it where it’s going to have the most impact. Don’t waste energy on things that don’t matter.”

Tennessee’s hiring process itself coming off the Jeremy Pruitt era was interesting, to say the least, and Heupel didn’t come in until late in the coaching carousel cycle. That added an extra degree of difficulty to the early days of a tricky rebuilding process.

“You look at the timing when I got hired, late January, so much uncertainly surrounding the program, the two months leading up to it,” Heupel said. “Thirty-five plus players entered the portal. At that time you could only bring in an annual count of 25 guys. We went into Year 1 with 65 scholarship players. Most guys were at 90, 95 because of COVID seniors that year.

“There were a lot of things that we had to navigate in a really short amount of time.”