After Tennessee football’s resurgent 2022 season that included Jalin Hyatt becoming the first Vol to win the Biletnikoff Award, a new narrative has developed about Josh Heupel’s offense and the Vols’ program.
Tennessee’s style of play doesn’t prepare players for the NFL and the skillsets that made them effective in Knoxville won’t translate to the NFL.
Negative recruiting is rampant in college football and Oregon transfer receiver Dont’e Thornton confirmed earlier this week that teams tried to use that argument against Tennessee during his recruitment.
“Oh yeah, I’d definitely say teams did try to downplay it,” Thornton said of Tennessee’s offensive success. “Saying it doesn’t translate to the NFL style, but if you can get open you can do that in the college level and in the NFL level.”
The strategy wasn’t effective for recruiting Thornton. The transfer receiver didn’t buy that Tennessee’s offense wouldn’t prepare him for the NFL. In fact, the way the Vols used Hyatt a season ago is one of the things that made Tennessee so attractive to the Oregon transfer.
There are differences in Hyatt and Thornton’s game but both are tall college slot receivers with blazing speeds that can stretch defenses vertically.
“I’d say it was a part because you see how he performed in the offense and with me coming in, they looked at me as a person that could come in in that same role,” Thornton said of Hyatt’s success. “So that had a big part in me coming here.”
Heupel is likely the only person that’s dealt with the narrative more than receiver’s coach Kelsey Pope. Pope has fought it on the recruiting trail throughout his two years as Tennessee’s receivers coach.
He explained why he doesn’t believe the narrative is logical or holds up earlier this week.
“I think what people don’t understand, they try to just kind of make up, but it’s my job as a coach to answer questions in the recruiting process,” Pope said. “Our offense puts guys in situations to win one-on-one matchups. Defenses are supposed to stop guys and those one-on-one situations. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day what the scheme is, what the play call is. I’m given a technique to beat a defensive player. He’s given a technique to beat me. If I’m beating him 10 out of 10 times, I can translate that on any level and that’s what it comes down to.”
The narrative gained steam earlier this offseason when Hyatt and Cedric Tillman each fell to the third round of the 2023 NFL Draft. Hendon Hooker fought the same narrative before the Detroit Lions drafted him in the third round— though coming off a torn ACL contributed too.
Tennessee’s best way to fight the narrative is for its former players to have success at the next level. Tillman and particularly Hyatt have flashed during training camp, but they’ll have to show it in the regular season to prove the naysayers wrong.
However, the narrative seemingly hasn’t been overly affective to recruits. The Vols have two top 150 receiver recruits committed in their 2024 recruiting class: four-star Braylon Staley and five-star Mike Matthews.
