Tennessee suffered one of the worst losses of the first round of the 12-team College Football Playoff in a weekend littered with blowouts and questions surrounding the CFP and the committee's rankings. Every home team won its first-round matchup, and that was no different for Ohio State.
The Buckeyes handled the Vols in their 42-17 win. Ohio State will advance to the Rose Bowl, and Tennessee will clean out its lockers and head home for the holidays.
Where does the Tennessee football program stand after its blowout loss?
It's easy to overreact to the loss and exclaim that Josh Heupel needs to clean the house or even say that Heupel himself needs to go. Are there some changes that need to be made within the coaching staff? Yes, but that doesn't mean everyone has to go after advancing to the College Football Playoff.
Those arguing that Heupel might need to find a new home should reconsider. He has completely transformed Tennessee from what it was four years before he arrived.
Heupel has been 37-14 at Tennessee in four seasons, which is lightyears better than the four years before he arrived, when Tennessee went 20-25, including its first eight-loss season in program history.
He has gotten Tennessee into the CFP for the first time in program history and won ten games twice in the past three seasons. His recruiting classes have improved every year, including a top-ten class this cycle.
Heupel has also found his quarterback of the future in Nico Iamaleava, who just finished the best freshman season from a Tennessee quarterback in program history. Was it perfect? No, but we would have given anything to watch a freshman quarterback win ten games for Tennessee no less than a decade ago.
Heupel has taken Tennessee out of the gutter and made it into a really good football program. They are on the brink of being a perennial College Football Playoff contender.
His next step is to take Tennessee from good to elite, which is what Ohio State has been doing for the past decade. Tennessee wasn't supposed to beat Ohio State, not on the road, but Nico and Heupel gave the Vols the opportunity to shock the nation, and it just didn't happen.
We will see if Heupel is the guy who can take Tennessee to the Promised Land sooner rather than later. This is the same path Phillip Fulmer's Tennessee team took in 1997. The 1998 season ended with Tennessee hoisting the crystal ball.
I'm not saying that history will repeat itself in 2025, but if Huepel is the guy, he should be able to take the Vols from CFP contender to national championship contender in the next season or two.
The key indicator will be Tennessee's blue-chip ratio, which is the percentage of four- and five-star players on the roster. Tennessee only had 46% of its roster as blue-chip players, almost immediately eliminating them from national championship contention before the season started.
If you're disappointed with Heupel, know that Tennessee outperformed ten of the top 16 teams in blue-chip ratio this season. Unsurprisingly, Ohio State, Georgia, and Oregon are all in the top five in that order and are clearly among the best teams in the country.
Tennessee will need to improve its blue-chip ratio if it wants to realistically compete for a national championship year in and year out. Ohio State's 90% blue-chip ratio sets the Buckeyes apart from the Vols in their matchup, and that will continue to be the case if Tennessee doesn't bring in more elite talent through traditional recruiting and the transfer portal.
The Vols are in a great spot to compete for a national title for years to come. Heupel needs to make improvements and figure out why Tennessee is a completely different team on the road than at home.
If Heupel can fix the most obvious issues in his program before the start of 2025, we could be in for another great year with an improved roster on Rocky Top.