Tennessee football: Week 0 of 2022 produces two concerns for Vols

You’re never supposed to overreact to the first week, especially when you didn’t even play that week. However, there were two games from Week 0 that could give Tennessee football fans reasons to worry down the road.

The first is what the Vanderbilt Commodores did to the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. Yes, Vandy was favored, but it was on the road. They went 2-10 last year, and they won both games by no more than a field goal. There was no reason to believe in them this year.

Well, Clark Lea’s team looks like it could be more dangerous than we thought. Vandy beat Hawaii 63-10 on the road, and there’s no way to overlook that sort of dominance, regardless of the issues Hawaii is going through. Maybe they did take a step forward.

At the beginning of the year, Tennessee football had four circled wins and one likely win. The Missouri Tigers were its one likely win, and the three non-Power Five foes plus Vandy were its four circled wins. This game may change that.

After all, the Vols lost five of seven to Vanderbilt from 2012 to 2018, including three straight from 2016 to 2018. Funny enough, they lost five of seven to Mizzou in the same time frame. That’s a story for another day.

When it comes to Vanderbilt specifically, that stretch proved this game was more of a rivalry than any rivalry Tennessee football has with the Florida Gators or Alabama Crimson Tide anymore. When you consider the fact that UT has to travel to Nashville this year, it makes things interesting.

There’s another concern for the Vols, though, and it’s on a bit larger of a scale. Scott Frost is a dead man walking with the Nebraska Cornhuskers after their loss to the Northwestern Wildcats. Frost and Heupel obviously have a connection.

Danny White hired both of them to the UCF Knights when he was their athletic director, picking Heupel to replace Frost. Could that mean that Heupel is headed the same route as Frost? Sure, there’s excitement now, but it’s only after one year.

Given the location of the school and the conference that it’s in, there has always been a legitimate argument that UCF is a place that’s naturally easy to win at. Did Frost and Heupel ride that wave? A 7-6 season by Heupel at UT isn’t enough to get excited about.

Now, there are tons of factors that are different between Frost and Heupel, not the least of which being Heupel can actually recruit skill players in Knoxville. Nebraska was always better going the Iowa Hawkeyes route and focusing on elite offensive linemen and playing physical, which isn’t conducive to Frost’s coaching style.

However, both were national championship quarterbacks in the Big 12 who were hired by White at UCF. The similarities are hard to ignore, and on a macro scale, you have to wonder if Heupel will end up having the same issues as Frost. Both are at programs desperately trying to reclaim their glory days of the 1990s.

Of the two, the Vanderbilt story is a more tangible, legitimate concern. There is reason to worry about the danger they pose to Tennessee football this year, and it could play a role in derailing Heupel if things get tough. That would make him similar to Frost in the long run.