When Josh Heupel took over as head coach for Tennessee football in 2021, the program was arguably at an all-time low.
The infamous NCAA investigation had launched a couple of months prior, the athletic director had stepped down, and an alarmingly high number of players had entered the transfer portal.
As a first-year head coach, Heupel inherited a nearly impossible situation.
But Heupel and the 2021 Vols found a way to win seven games and make a bowl game. Fast forward to the following season, Tennessee won 11 games, beating Florida and Alabama in the process.
When Tennessee senior defensive lineman Omari Thomas was reflecting back on the past couple of season at the 2023 SEC Media Days, he noted that somewhere along the way, Tennessee went from ‘hoping’ to win football games to ‘expecting’ to win each and ever Saturday, no matter the opponent.
Now, entering the 2023 season, ‘expecting’ to win football games has become a popular message inside the Tennessee locker room.
“This offseason, it’s been something that we talk about every team meeting. ‘Are you a team that hopes, believes or expects?'” Thomas said. “And we’re a team, I feel like, we expect to win. We go out there every week, rely on our training, rely on what we do as a team, and it’s just been really good. Hopefully, we will continue to grow as a team, and we’re just trying to get better every day.”
Thomas noted it was not always that way. For most of the 2021 season, Tennessee was merely ‘hoping’ to win games.
“We were a team that we hoped,” Thomas said when reflecting back to two years ago. “But as the season went on, we started to expect and believe. We bought into what Coach Heupel was telling us and trusted the process. To not have selfish people on the team. Everybody was just believing that what we do on the team will be good. It’s been true to say what Coach Heupel has brought to Tennessee, the culture and everything, is going to continue to grow. And we’re just happy to be a part of it.”
It was difficult for Thomas to narrow down a specific moment in which the shift happened. But the Memphis, Tennessee, native did acknowledge the shift had already taken place prior to last fall.
“I would say just after the first season with Heup (Josh Heupel),” Thomas said on when the shift occurred. “After that season, everyone was like, ‘Oh, we can really do something special here.’ We didn’t really believe in ourselves [before], but now we expect. We come in every day knowing what we’re going to do, knowing how we’re going to attack the day and knowing that we have to get better. We can’t get complacent.”
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Senior tight end Jacob Warren agreed with his teammate that ‘expecting’ to win is now the status quo in Knoxville, also noting that the confidence within the program has greatly improved in the last 24 months.
“It’s all about confidence and how we prepare. And who we are,” Warren said. “In the past, we all have believed that we could win… But there’s a different level of confidence when you say, ‘I expect to win.’ That’s me telling you, like, ‘Hey, you’re not winning the game. We’re winning the game.’ And that’s 100 percent not arrogant, cocky, or anything like that.”
Heupel’s vision has worked wonders in such a short amount of time. The Vols have developed a different edge, confidence, and attitude on Saturdays.
“It’s truly based on how much work we’ve put in and the level of talent we have in this program and the amount of trust we have in the coaches to say, ‘Yeah, we expect to win every Saturday,'” Warren said.
You can watch Thomas and Warren’s SEC Media Days appearance below.
