“The standard is to win championships at Tennessee. Nobody shies away from that.”
The 2023 Tennessee football season is officially in the books.
With plenty of ups and some downs throughout the season, the Vols finished on a high note with a 35-0 win over No. 17 Iowa, highlighted by the emergence of quarterback Nico Iamaleava. Tennessee’s final record of 9-4 is the second-best record of Josh Heupel’s three-year tenure at Tennessee.
But it was Heupel’s statement to the media after the Citrus Bowl that will surely get Vol fans fired up for the 2024 season with eight months separating now and Tennessee’s first 2024 game.
When asked what type of statement the win over Iowa made, Heupel was confident and passionate with his answer.
“The finish to the ‘23 season is the kick-off to ‘24,” Heupel said in his final answer from the postgame media availability. “I think it speaks to the culture that we have inside of our building, our locker room. Speaks to the type of competitors that we have that buckle their chin straps and wear the Power T on the side of their helmet. You look at all of the young guys that got so many meaningful snaps today. I think it speaks to the future being extremely bright.”
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The 2024 football schedule will present new and unique challenges as the SEC moves to a division-less conference schedule with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas, putting unfamiliar teams such as Mississippi State, Arkansas, and Oklahoma on the Vols’ schedule. But Heupel believes that the people inside of the building and the culture that has been carefully crafted over the last few seasons will all combine together to help Tennessee achieve its goals – and the expectation of championships on Rocky Top.
“There’s a lot of things that we’re going to need to reset and grow from when they come back in January,” Heupel continued on to say. “Every season starts over, but it’s a group that I love being around and if we can continue to be great teammates, care about the people around us more than we care about ourselves, we can pour into each other, we compete extremely hard every single day while having as much fun as we possibly can, the future’s extremely bright. The challenge is great. The standard is to win championships at Tennessee. Nobody shies away from that. We got to continue to grow to put ourselves in position to do that.”
Two standout players from the Vols’ Citrus Bowl win over Iowa are going to be the two most talked about names on the Tennessee roster throughout the off-season: quarterback Nico Iamaleava and EDGE rusher James Pearce Jr.
Both talented players showed why Tennessee has such a promising future as game-changing players on both sides of the ball.
Tennessee doesn’t have a perfect roster and won’t all season. But with a young and talented quarterback, an experienced offensive line, a strong group of receivers, and a stout group of rushers that can get after the quarterback, Tennessee will almost certainly have a dangerous identity on both sides of the ball.
Flanked by Iamaleava and Pearce Jr. to both sides of him, Heupel’s press conference answer can be seen in the video below.
The full press conference from Josh Heupel, Nico Iamaleava, and James Pearce Jr. can be found here:
