Second seasons can make or break a head coach. As Josh Heupel enters Year Two leading Tennessee football, there are plenty of second seasons he’s had in different roles he’d like to replicate. In fact, second seasons in some cases have made Heupel’s whole career dating back to his playing days.
Heupel won a national championship his second year playing quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners. He got his first head coaching job after his second year as offensive coordinator at one spot. Already, that’s a pretty good track record. What about the rest of his coaching career?
Since hanging up his cleats, Heupel has had a second year at five different places before taking over Tennessee football. This post will look at each of those seasons, how his teams fared and how he specifically fared. We’ll start with his first second year in a role and work our way up from there, so let’s go ahead and dive in.
12-1 (8-0); Big 12 Champion; No. 3 AP and Coaches
After a two-year stint in the pros with the Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers, Josh Heupel returned to coach under Bob Stoops as a 25-year-old graduate assistant in 2003. With Heupel’s national championship quarterback on the staff, his current quarterback at the time, Jason White, went on to win the Heisman Trophy.
White led OU to a perfect 12-0 regular season record, looking like the greatest team of all time, before losing their final two games, including the national title to the LSU Tigers. In 2004, they were looking to get back to the title. With White and freshman Adrian Peterson, they did just that.
OU went 12-0, actually winning the Big 12 this year, and got a chance to play the 11-0 USC Trojans. The Auburn Tigers were also 12-0, but OU got the nod because Auburn, ironically, struggled with Tennessee football in the SEC Championship game. Despite getting back to the game, OU was blown out even worse, losing 55-19.
11-3 (6-2); Big 12 Champion; No. 8 AP and Coaches
Heupel got his first job as an on-field assistant a year after that 2004 OU season, joining Bob Stoops’ younger brother, Mike Stoops, in his second year with the Arizona Wildcats and coaching tight ends. A year later, he returned to OU to coach quarterbacks and helped them win the Big 12 championship again with Paul Thompson at quarterback.
This year, OU was breaking in a new quarterback, a guy named Sam Bradford. Current Tennessee football quarterbacks coach Joey Halzle was a backup on this team. Heupel’s coaching immediately turned Bradford into a star, as he completed 237 of 341 passes (69.5 percent) for 3,121 yards (9.2 yards per attempt), 36 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
In the process, the Sooners went 10-2 in the regular season and then won the Big 12 Championship. They did lose their bowl game to the West Virginia Mountaineers in the Orange Bowl, but it wasn’t Heupel’s fault, as the passing was fine. OU gave up 48 points.
Anyway, this was the middle of a four-year run by Heupel coaching OU quarterbacks where he primarily turned Bradford into a Heisman Trophy winner and the No. 1 pick in the 2010 NFL Draft. This was the season that proved he knew how to develop quarterbacks.
10-3 (8-1); Big 12 co-Champion; No. 15 AP and Coaches
Bob Stoops finally made Josh Heupel his offensive coordinator in 2011 after four years coaching the Oklahoma Sooners. He was off to a rocky start, though, as OU entered that year ranked No. 1 but ended up going 10-3. To be fair, though, it wasn’t Heupel’s fault, as his offense averaged 39.5 points per game, which was No. 10 nationally.
A year later, the same story occurred. With Landry Jones at quarterback, Heupel led an offense that averaged over 38 points a game, good for No. 16 in the nation. It was his offense that kept OU afloat that year as they finished second in the Big 12 to the Kansas State Wildcats due to losing to them despite both teams being declared co-champions.
Anyway, this was the peak for Heupel’s tenure as offensive coordinator. Over the next two years, there would be a bit of a decline on that side of the ball, and Stoops would move on from him after the 2014 season, opening the door for Lincoln Riley to take over.
Ironically, a year later, Riley and Baker Mayfield engineered a comeback win at Tennessee football, one of many heartbreaks for the Vols under Butch Jones. That stemmed from Heupel being fired after 2014. This year was probably his peak year as OU’s offensive coordinator.
7-6 (4-4)
Three years after his firing, this was his resurrection. Josh Heupel spend 2015 with the Utah State Aggies, and then he joined Barry Odom’s new staff with the Missouri Tigers. At the time, the player protests the year before and Gary Patterson’s resignation signaled a program falling apart.
In 2016, Mizzou went 4-8. Hidden in that record was Heupel’s new offense, though, as he was averaging 31.8 points per game and over 500 yards of offense per game with Drew Lock at quarterback. it was clear something special was happening under the radar, and this season, Heupel’s second at Mizzou, would be the year he exploded.
The Tigers fell to a 1-5 start, and all hope seemed lost again. However, they had an easy finish to the year, and they reeled off six straight wins in which they scored 45 or more points each time. Included in that streak was a blowout 50-17 win over Tennessee football, which resulted in Butch Jones’ firing the next day.
Mizzou finished the year averaging 37.5 points per game and over 503 yards of offense. Heupel’s reputation had a dramatic turnaround, and this coaching job earned him his first head coaching job with the UCF Knights. Again ironically, Mizzou replaced him with former Tennessee football head coach Derek Dooley a year later.
10-3 (6-2); No. 24 AP and Coaches
Josh Heupel inherited a UCF team that went undefeated in 2017 and actually hung a national championship banner. He followed that up by going undefeated in 2018 during the regular season before losing his bowl game to the LSU Tigers. Still, he proved he could coach his first year.
Big things should have been in store his second year. However, McKenzie Milton, the catalyst behind those undefeated seasons, suffered a knee injury late in 2018, sidelining him for 2019. Heupel then inserted Dillon Gabriel at quarterback, and he still did a good job. The offense was electric, averaging over 43 points a game.
Still, UCF wasn’t able to replicate what they did the year before. They stumbled to a 10-3 record. In their defense, they lost all three games by less than a field goal. That carried into 2020, the COVID-shortened season that saw them go 6-4. It was another drop-off, but they lost all three regular season games by one score.
Anyway, Heupel’s second year here isn’t one of his strongest selling points, and it may not be a good omen for what he will do at Tennessee football. However, his second year at Mizzou was a breakout season, and there are different factors in play here than there were at UCF.