Where Tennessee's Josh Heupel landed in On3's college football head coach rankings
Tennessee’s Josh Heupel is one of the 10 best coaches in college football, coming in at No. 10 on the On3 coach rankings from J.D. PicKell this week.
Georgia’s Kirby Smart was ranked No. 1, ahead of Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer and Oregon’s Dan Lanning. No. 6 was Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney was No. 7. LSU’s Brian Kelly was No. 8 and Penn State’s James Franklin was No. 9.
Heupel is 37-15 in four seasons at Tennessee, leading the Vols to 11 wins in 2022, 10 wins this season and nine wins in 2023.
Tennessee went to the 12-team College Football Playoff this season, losing on the road against eventual national champion Ohio State in the first round, and won the Orange Bowl in 2022, the program’s first New Year’s Six Bowl appearance during the CFP era.
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Heupel’s .769 win percentage is top-10 nationally and No. 3 in the SEC. He has 10 wins over ranked teams since the start of 2022 and his 30 wins over the last three seasons is the winningest stretch for Tennessee since 19998-2000.
Here’s what PicKell said about Heupel as his 10th-best head coach in college football:
“That might be a surprise to some of y’all. I don’t think Josh Heupel probably makes the top 10 list if you’re talking about the entire body of work versus other coaches in what they’ve done throughout the course of their career. But right now, Josh Heupel is a good freakin’ football coach. Won north of 70% of his games. And I think the most impressive thing about him and what he’s done at Tennessee is the way they’ve broken into relevance in the SEC. They were always relevant, I should say, but Tennessee, now when you talk about what they’ve done under Josh Heupel, they’re in that Tier 1 discussion. Now, if they are firmly in Tier 1 remains to be seen with what they do next year. I think a lot of Josh Heupel moving up this list has a lot to do with where Niko Iamaleava is in his progression.
“But Josh Heupel has got a win over Nick Saban has two double-digit win seasons in the last three years, and he’s done it with different quarterbacks. Like Joe Milton got a lot of flack for what he was at Tennessee, and I’m not telling you that was right or wrong, but I am saying Josh Heupel still managed to get that offense to score over 30 points a game. Oh, by the way, the defense was the punchline for a lot of folks talking about what Tennessee was, and right now is the offensive coach in Josh Heupel, who again got a defense to be top five in America last year. So Josh Heupel, the coaching job he’s done. Oh, by the way, he’s also got his team to the College Football Playoff, something that put him in the No. 10 spot for me, ahead of some of the other coaches.
“Josh Heupel right now is a top-10 coach in the sport. I think the resume proves it. I think the fact that he inherited a team that was 3-7 from the COVID era when he showed up, that matters to me. So Josh Heupel, the body of work, the progression, all those things, to me he’s at 10.
“If he wants to move up this list, I need to see Nico Iamaleava take a step as what he was as a recruit to what he’s going to be in 2025.”
