KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Welles Jones Jr., a do-it-all wide receiver and returns specialist from Tennessee, drove into an Uber one night this fall.
At least initially the driver didn't know who was in the back seat.
The conversation immediately turned to Tennessee football. After Walls lost a heartbreak to Ole Miss and Len Kiffin at the national level, a lightning strike at Neyland Stadium was marred by a 20-minute stoppage for debris thrown onto the field. Had some questionable calls got in Walls' way that night, they could have worked on a three-game SEC winning streak after scoring 107 points in fixtures in Missouri and South Carolina over the past two weeks.
"Even though we lost to Ole Miss, he just kept talking about how excited he was to see Tennessee football again and it hadn't been like that in a long time," Jones said. "You can hear it in his voice, the way fans checkerboarded Neyland, how we thrived on offense and the impact Coach Heppel had in just one year."
Finally, the driver looked in the rearview mirror, and his eyes widened.
"You're Welles Jones, aren't you?" They said.
The SEC's Co-Special Teams Player of the Year, Jones nodded and flashed a big smile. From there, the conversation shifted into overdrive.
It was a ride that only paused for Jones to see what this season has meant for so many beleaguered Tennessee fans, whose passion for a return to the glory days has boiled over more than once during the past decade—plus, As wales roam the football wasteland.
"When I got out of the car, I took a picture with him and everything," Jones said. "He thanked me for helping to rejuvenate Tennessee football, and I told him that there was still more life left to do."
This time a year ago, Tennessee's program would have been on life support as well. Walls was coming out of the season 3–7, his third losing campaign in four years. An internal investigation into alleged NCAA rules violations was ongoing, the scope of which was later called "astonishing" and "shocking" by university chancellor Donde Plowman, and Tennessee was seeking its sixth head coach in 14 seasons, when Jeremy Pruitt was fired for the cause. , Philip Fulmer retired as athletic director in the wake of all this, and eventually 33 scholarship players would leave the program or enter the transfer portal. There was no reason to believe the 7–5 season, which included Heppel being a finalist for the Steve Spurrier Award as the nation's top first-year coach, was in the immediate future.
"There were so many unknowns and so much noise about how bad it was going to get," said senior offensive lineman Jerome Carvin. "It seemed like every day a different teammate was shifting out. We sat there saying, 'Should we give it up or stay out?'
"But those who decided to stay fell in love with playing for the University of Tennessee again, mainly because Coach Heppel and the rest of the coaches came and created a culture of trust."
Not to mention a heavy dose of reality.
Josh Huepel's steady demeanor and mix of positivity, consistency and ironic accountability have provided a calming effect in a place that has been antithetical to peace.
"He got into such a challenging position, and one of Josh's strengths, having worked with him over the past four years, is that he doesn't panic," said Tennessee athletic director Danny White on assignment to Huepel at UCF. keep and then changed. And hired him again in Tennessee.
"He comes to the same guy's campus every day and works on his plan. I'm not sure I've ever seen him tense up. It's so amazing how he sees things."
But as Tennessee defensive line coach Rodney Garner notes, don't let that immaculate personality fool you.
"He's competitive as hell, and when I say competitive, I mean competitive in everything we do," said Garner, one of five on-field assistants at Heppel's SEC coaching/recruitment. Hired with experience.
And while Tennessee may be one of the SEC's surprises, especially considering that the program was down to 69 scholarship players at one point this season, Heppel isn't one to celebrate that Vol. have a chance. A season for only the fourth time in the past 14 years when they face Purdue at Thursday's Transparent Music City Bowl (3 p.m. ET, ESPN and ESPN apps).
He made a promise to the players when he took the job he intended to keep.
"We never put a limit on what we achieved or didn't do this year," Heppel told ESPN. "It was a big part of their shopping. These people were my people. I chose Tennessee. They chose Tennessee. They didn't necessarily choose me. They were all here before, but that was common ground.
"Our kids knew we had a chance to win, and we never went back."
Heppel, 43, also knew exactly what was going on in Tennessee after leading UCF to a 28-8 record in three seasons. Walls had gone through far more major football coaches, athletic directors and chancellors/presidents than he had won major football games in the past decade. White, Tennessee's fifth different full-time athletic director, who was moving to Mike Hamilton back in 2011, said that there is no narrative that Heppel was Wallace's fallback choice after several others turned the job down, which is clear. Absolutely wrong.
"I cast a wide net and went full circle, working through the search, and I kept coming back to Josh and he was the whole package," White said. "So, yeah, we talked to a lot of different people, but to say that Josh took the job because other people didn't want it to be accurate and not really fair to Josh."
Either way, it didn't take long for White to become familiar with the gamut of volume Twitter—passion, loyalty, bruised pride, and sometimes poison.
"My first few months here, people were angry, frustrated, agitated," White said. "It wasn't everyone, but I think our fans see the same things I see after year 1 - a really healthy culture, kids who work hard and a coaching staff that gets the most out of them." We're not as good as we're going to be, but from a hope and positivity standpoint, we've come back pretty quickly."
Some of the heaviest lifting is yet to come.
Former athletic director Doug Dickey used to say that Tennessee's head coach would always be measured by how he performed against main rivals Alabama, Florida and Georgia, and that the volume needed to beat those three teams at least as much. They beat Vol.
Well, going back to the start of Fulmer's final season in 2008, Tennessee is 4-38 against those three teams. The Vols have now gone through five straight seasons in which they have lost to all three teams, 14 of 15 by double points, and those 15 losses by an average margin of 26.5 points per game.
"The thing about this team is that we never stopped fighting, never gave up competing," Carvin said. "Even when we had a bad quarter or a bad half, we were ready to go back to the next game and literally one way away from being a nine-win team. But those are the games and things that keep us going as one." I will help move forward in the program."
Bringing in (and keeping) elite players would also help. Carwin will return next season with quarterback Hendon Hooker and lead receiver Cedric Tillman. All three could have turned supporters but elected to stay. Hooker was one of college football's most influential transfers after coming from Virginia Tech. 3 nationally with 26 touchdown passes and just three interceptions, while also rushing for five touchdowns.
Volume is again actively mining the transfer portal for the 2022 season, and Huppel's first recruiting class earlier this month produced a number of significant additions, particularly on the defensive line. But how far behind Tennessee was in terms of personnel when Heppel arrived is not understood.
As a player, Hepel faced similar challenges. He grew up in Aberdeen, South Dakota and jokes, "If you hunt pheasant, that's the only reason you go there." His high school basketball team played for a state title, but his high school football team struggled in both his sophomore and junior season.
"But my senior season, we were able to flip it and run a deep run into the playoffs," Heppel said.
It was a similar story in Oklahoma when Heppel arrived on Bob Stoops' first season as coach in 1999. The Sooners had suffered five straight non-winning seasons, and Stoops was the OU's fourth head coach in six seasons. But in that second season, Heupel was the Heisman Trophy runner-up, and the Sooners won the national title.
"Some of the greatest experiences in my life have been part of trying to build something," Heppel said. "It's rare that you can handle a historic event with all the tools and resources we have here and build it back in a unique way."
Immediately, Huepel could sense the suspicion and suspicion among the players. He wasn't hired until January 27, a week after White was hired as athletic director, and the team — at least what was left after the mass exodus — was already participating in off-season workouts. Was being
"We didn't know what to expect," Jones said. "Football wasn't a lot of fun for any of us."
Huppel's first meeting with the players lasted about an hour and a half. He introduced himself, stuck to his core values, and most of the rest of the time was an open dialogue.
More than anything, the people in the room wanted accountability, which the players and coaches said was sorely lacking in the program.
"Before Coach Huepel came, people were ready to leave this place and do pretty much whatever they wanted," Carvin said. "I mean, after practice, they'll get up and leave from here. Now, people want to stay, watch a movie and just hang around. It's a different vibe, and people know what the expectations are and what It's a farm."
In his second stint in Tennessee, Garner also coached Georgia and Auburn in the SEC. He said it was clear that the players were looking for direction.
Garner said, "In the first two weeks, I had more misses than in the last 31 years — missed meetings, delayed meetings, missed class sessions." "[Hepel] set the tone and let it be known that everything matters. We weren't going to be a bunch of individuals."
Nothing was too trivial, whether it was eating all three meals on the football complex or making a genuine effort to get to know all of your teammates, not just the people in your status group.
"The habits you have outside the game ... they matter inside the game as well, and I think that's what our kids have learned and bought," Huppel said. "It was a big part of the change you see in Tennessee football."
Walls didn't feast on a cushy schedule in Heppel's first season. They faced five of the top 22 teams and four of the top 12 in the final rankings of the College Football Playoff Committee. He also faced three quarterbacks in Heisman Trophy voting in Alabama's Bryce Young, Pittsburgh's Kenny Pickett and Ole Miss' Matt Coral, who finished first, third, and seventh, respectively.
Moving on to bowl games, Tennessee is 19 points away from setting the school record for most points in a season (484), which was set in 1993 during Fulmer's first full season. Walls has scored 45 or more points in six of his 12 games, and his 466 points are the third-highest in the school's history. That is, after scoring 215 in 2020, 314 in 2019, 273 in 2018 and 238 in 2017.
Jones, who began his career at USC before relocating to Tennessee, said, "I know this: a lot of people want to play in this kind of aggressive style and play for a coach who is like Coach Heppel to you. believes in."
One of the next steps will be to enroll the state of Tennessee more successfully. According to ESPN's ranking, Walls signed just one of the top 15 in-state prospects in the 2022 signing class.
"[NCAA] hiring was in some ways harder this year in-state than out-of-state because of the cloud and noise, and it was non-stop," Heppel said. "But we continued to build momentum from spring to summer and into early fall and late fall, and we will continue to climb."
The university announced in November that it had ended its year-long internal investigation and would not impose a bowl ban, although the university plans to impose other penalties on its own, such as a reduction in scholarships and other recruitment restrictions. Sources told ESPN that the university has yet to receive notice of the allegations from the NCAA.
Heppel's defining memory from this first season will be how hard the players worked and the way he embraced his style of tough love.
"The adage we use in the building is that you are coached by passion. You are not coached by emotions," Huppel said.
It's an approach that the Big Orange Nation is even more thirsty for next season. Billboards reading "#eVOLution22" are already popping up in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville.
"These guys started something that we can build on," Heppel said.
Jones, a sixth-year senior, won't be around until 2022, but he can't wait to see what happens next.
"This is just the beginning."