The Blueprint That Powers Tennessee’s No. 1 Offense

The Vols have been known for their big plays this season, but pay attention to their tempo and what they do in the red zone.

There’s a three-play sequence that gives a near-total snapshot of Tennessee’s offense this season as the Vols debut at No. 1 in the first College Football Playoff rankings of 2022. It came during the epic tide-shifting win over Alabama, early in the second quarter.

On first-and-10 out of a stoppage, Tennessee short-motions one receiver into a stack alignment and hits a modest in-breaking route that goes for a big gain. The Vols follow it up almost immediately with a run play that goes for a short gain inside the 10. They line up again for a play that ends up being stopped by the officials, and then they score on a two-yard plunge.

It may not be what you think of with the Tennessee offense if you’re expecting the highlights you’ve seen of streaking receivers in acres of space (and who doesn’t love watching receiver Jalin Hyatt behind a busted coverage 50 yards downfield from QB Hendon Hooker?). But these plays showcase the things that make this offense so difficult to stop from a down-to-down basis. Like any good unit, Tennessee has five core offensive philosophies:

1. Tempo
2. Spacing
3. Vertical run game
4. Vertical pass game
5. Personnel placement

They were all on display against the Crimson Tide.

Play 1

Tennessee lines up for a play against Alabama

You will often see Tennessee actually line up in a formation like this, with receivers spread so wide all 11 players don’t fit on the screen (there’s a player at the bottom of the shot for each team outside the numbers and a stack receiver alignment at the top). There’s also the spacing element of the equation. A football field is 53⅓ yards wide, and the Vols use basically every inch of it. It forces defenses to make a choice.

You can defend with fewer players up front (referred to as a light box), like Kentucky did on Hyatt’s opening touchdown in the first quarter of last Saturday’s game. Theoretically, this gives you a better chance to stop the pass due to the fact that you’ve allocated more bodies to coverage because the vertical passing game is such a crucial part of what Tennessee does. But even that didn’t work for the Wildcats …

… because of their inability to communicate who would defend whom distributing out of the stack alignment. On the play above, Hyatt just ran by the defensive back.

On Play 1, from the Bama game, Tennessee motions to the stack alignment and actually runs a route combination that ends up being more of an intermediate look. This gets at Tennessee’s personnel placement philosophy, bringing the outside receiver into a stack alignment, then releasing him inside at the snap. The ball goes to Ramel Keyton on an in-breaking route for a huge gain.

Likely because of Tennessee’s intensely vertical passing attack (it has 30 pass plays of 30+ yards and leads the country by a margin of seven through eight games), Alabama’s DBs are playing this with plenty of cushion to give them some more time to decipher how Tennessee’s WRs are going to distribute out of the stack (the advantage of playing out of such an alignment).

Sometimes the Vols don’t actually use the vertical pass—merely the threat of it is enough—and they create a big play, anyway.

Play 2

Now, we get the tempo piece.

“Most of the time we’re going so fast, I want to make sure I get a look at the back end, look at the structure of the defense,” Hooker says. “When we see someone getting tired, and their body language is showing fatigue, we want to increase our tempo even more.”

Some coaches consider tempo simply a tool (even Tennessee coach Josh Heupel has said so in the past), but it is very much the Vols’ identity.

Tennessee can’t really run something up-tempo out of a stoppage, and it tends to opt against going up-tempo on third downs in long-yardage obvious passing situations. This gives Hooker time to read what defenses may be bringing in what can be a scenario where they throw a changeup in the form of a unique pressure package to get off the field. But, for instance, when Tennessee gets a first down on a big play, defenses have to be ready because up-tempo is coming—and the Vols go about as fast as physically possible when they really put the hammer down. Snapping it within 13 seconds of the previous play after a big gain gives defenses a unique problem to defend. Defenses are scrambling after taking a haymaker; sometimes they’re not all the way lined up (which can make it tricky for Tennessee’s linemen to actually know what their assignments are), but the advantages of the tempo outweigh the negatives.

"They can go as fast as anybody in the country,” Georgia’s Kirby Smart said this week. “They practice it, they preach it, they do a really good job researching themselves and figuring out how they can get faster. And our job is to be able to match that tempo and match that conditioning level.”

When Keyton catches the ball during the play below, there’s an official near him on the sideline. But he doesn’t simply flip the ball to him out on the side—he runs back toward the middle of the field to get the ball to the umpire, who typically has the responsibility of spotting it for the next play.

It can sometimes be difficult to see on a broadcast, because the TV crew typically doesn’t show what’s happening live in lieu of a close-up or a crowd shot or a replay, but Tennessee has a unique way of stealing seconds back that it refers to as ball mechanics.

Once the play ends, everyone has a job to do to be in the right position to operate quickly. The center splits the difference between where the line judge (who operates on the sideline nearer to the offense) and the hash where the ball will be spotted. The wideouts get set, making sure the referees know which one of them is on and off the ball to avoid illegal formation penalties, and know whether they’re tackled in bounds or out of bounds to get the ball to the umpire who is at the middle of the field. They’ll then line up about 12 yards away from the ball on the defensive side.

The quarterbacks and running backs, if tackled behind the line of scrimmage, know to look for the center judge (who lines up behind the QB), and if they get a positive gain of more than two yards, they get the ball to the umpire. As Tennessee’s playbook graphic states, “the fastest way to get the ball set is to get the ball inside.”

This also hurts an opposing defense, because it can’t substitute, and it can be deadly after a big passing play. To match up with Tennessee in open play in addition to playing a light box, teams are often playing with physically lighter personnel in subpackages where they substitute a lineman or a linebacker off for a defensive back to help defend the pass. That can be helpful when you’re trying to chase Tennessee’s vertical passing game, but it’s detrimental when you’re trying to defend Tennessee’s vertical running game.

The splashy passes are great from the Vols, but the run game is the engine that makes the thing go. Tennessee often runs plays like the above and counter, which are referred to as vertical running plays because they are straight-ahead plays that get into the defense immediately versus an outside-zone scheme where the offensive linemen work more laterally at the snap, and the running back can be patient and make a read before making his cut.

It can be difficult for defenses to generate negative plays on vertical run concepts when executed correctly, and if your box also happens to be light as far as the number of bodies in it, Tennessee’s mauling offensive line is going to get the better of you in one-on-ones. Its rushing success goes a long way in explaining how good it is in the red zone, leading the country in points per drive and touchdowns scored in the red zone. When space gets tight, especially inside the 10, you’ve got to be able to run the ball, and the Vols do it effectively enough to pair with their explosive passing game.

Play 3

Technically there is a fourth play nullified by a penalty in the Alabama game sequence, because Tennessee is going so fast there’s confusion. What’s initially called a false start gets wiped away as the officials determine even they weren’t ready for the play to start because they hadn’t assumed their positions quickly enough.

But for all the pacing and spacing, Tennessee will kick it old-school when it really needs to, even lining up in an I formation with a tight end in the backfield and running fullback dive (remember: personnel placement) to hit pay dirt and complete a quick-strike touchdown drive.

“At the end of the day, it still comes down to execution,” Heupel said. “So, when we’re good in the red zone, it’s because the quarterback’s making good decisions; it’s because we’re able to run the football effectively, make competitive one-on-one catches. The tempo can be an advantage for us, but you’ve seen us at times slow down and still execute, too. Our guys are able to be flexible in what we’re doing and at the end of the day when you’re down there, decisions happen faster for your quarterback; you’ve got to make competitive plays, our skill guys are doing that, and we’ve been really physical up front.”

Even beyond what’s explained here, there are plenty of reasons Tennessee’s offense is as good a unit as we’ve seen in college football for a few years now. The system Heupel & Co. have built is on a sound foundation that exploits situations to produce points aplenty. Now, on Saturday, it faces its stiffest test against one of the best defenses in the country. Georgia’s D is at least schematically in the same family as the Alabama team the Vols shredded, and how the Dawgs defend Tennessee—and how they fare—will be fascinating.