Tennessee football: Josh Heupel in rare company with 4-2 start

At 4-2, Tennessee football is off to its best six-game start since 2016, when they began the season 5-0. That also happens to be the last time the Vols finished ranked in the top 25, which could be a good omen on its own.

However, that start is a really good sign for Josh Heupel as well. It’s the best six-game start for any first-year head coach on Rocky Top who inherited a team that had a losing record the season before in over 60 years.

Heupel is the first to pull this off a six-game start this good since Bowden Wyatt in 1955. That year, Tennessee football started 0-2 but then won four straight and finished 6-3-1. They had gone 4-6 in 1954 under Harvey Robinson, the direct successor to Robert Neyland.

Before Wyatt, the only coach to pull this off on Rocky Top was George Levene, who went 7-2-1 in 1907 with a 5-1 start. The year before, UT had gone 1-6-2 under James DePree, which was its fourth straight losing season at the time.

There have been 10 head coaches in UT’s history to inherit a team with a losing record the year before. Heupel being in the company with Wyatt, whose 1956 team went 10-0 in the regular season and won the SEC Championship, is a good sign.

That’s not the only good sign of a 4-2 start for the Vols either. We mentioned how its the best six-game start since 2016. Well, dating back to 2005, UT has only had six-game starts as good or better three times: 2006, 2007 and 2016.

The only times UT has been in the top 10 after the second Saturday in October since 2005 were 2006 and 2016, and 2007 is the last time they won the SEC East. As a result, it’s safe to say the Vols have a lot to celebrate with this start, even as they get set to begin a brutal four-game stretch against teams who are all currently in the top 25.

Dating back to the Doug Dickey era, only three times have the Vols failed to finish in the top 25 after a six-game start as good as 4-2, and it’s only happened twice since 1980. One of those years was 1983, when UT went 9-3 and should have finished in the top 25, and they have never failed to win eight games or fewer with such a start since 1980.

Simply put, Tennessee football starting 4-2 is a great sign for the future, and this is part of why Heupel has generated so much buzz early on in his tenure. If he can win one or two of these next four games, the interest will only grow.