Josh Heupel is disappointed with Tennessee’s loss to Ohio State in the CFP
Tennessee’s football season ended with a 42-17 loss to Ohio State on Saturday.
The finish is still raw in Tennesseein the wake of a surprising and complete loss in a College Football Playoff game.
So, while this is the last thing the Vols need to hear, they’d better come to terms with it.
A bitter rival Florida He is in a better place heading into the 2025 season.
“Momentum is a real thing in college football,” says Florida coach Billy Napier.
In the next era of this sport, momentum is the only thing.
Somehow, Florida — which could have fired Napier after a disastrous first half of the season — is riding high after all eight wins in 2024.
Meanwhile, Tennessee appears to be bleeding.
“It’s not just one thing,” Vols coach Josh Heupel said after a humiliating 25-point loss to Ohio State in a CFP first-round game. “We are going to start over and start retooling, rebuilding and growing as a football team.”
This is where we are in the cutthroat new landscape of college football, where one loss can change momentum, call into question the winning process, and, most importantly, be able to convince players (high school and transfer portal) that you are on the right path.
Where half a season can exceed two and a half years of operational chaos.
On the surface, none of this makes sense. Tennessee has 30 wins and an Orange Bowl win the past three years, and Florida has 19 wins and a win in the so-called Gasparilla Bowl.
after Crocodilewith talented midfielder DJ Lagway and a young roster full of rising stars, have the momentum. Forget about the coach who almost didn’t make it to 2025, or the coaching malpractice you’ve seen for the better part of the past three seasons.
Florida shows its strength. Tennessee vented weakness. You either rise with what is coming or fall with what is wrong.
“The momentum is real on game day and real throughout the calendar,” Napier said, and it’s as if he’s trying to convince you that one month should surpass everything else we’ve seen from Florida since he arrived in Gainesville in 2022.
Then there’s Heupel, who, in less than 15 minutes of the Ohio State autopsy, repeatedly said how disappointed he was with the loss — even though the Vols have been plagued by injuries to key players.
Everything that’s happened at Tennessee over the past three seasons is in stark contrast to what’s happened at Florida. However, here we are dealing with the idea that momentum trumps everything.
“Two years ago, I don’t know, we were sixth in the country,” Hubbell said. “There is a standard within our building, and we will continue to grow.”
And that is the key to this strange fact: growth.
Florida beat LSU and Ole Miss in the second half of the season, winning four of its last five games. The Gators nearly beat Georgia with a third-string backup quarterback after they took control of the game (and a 10-3 lead) late in the first half before Lagoway suffered a hamstring injury.
Meanwhile, Tennessee was embarrassed by Georgia in its only game that mattered over the final five of the season. The Vols have backed up to the CFP by throwing out a laughable schedule — Kentucky (4-8), Mississippi State (2-10), UTEP (3-9), Vanderbilt (6-6) — while others are ahead of them in The CFP poll continued to lose.
If that doesn’t confirm Florida’s momentum, a matchup between the two teams in October should remove all doubt. Tennessee’s 23-17 overtime win was as much a gift to Florida as it was a victory for the Vols.
But due to poor coaching practice, Florida would have won the game in regulation — starting with a penalty for too many players on the field during the final play of the first half. A penalty negated three points from a field goal.
The same points that would have won the game in regulation.
Nothing about this offseason momentum makes sense. It was not Florida’s rise in the second half that revealed determination and enthusiasm, and it was not Tennessee’s decline in the second half that revealed flaws.
But it’s undeniable in Gainesville and hard to ignore in Knoxville.
“I have to try harder than I did last season,” Lagoay said. “It’s going to be a great season.”
During the final minutes of Tulane’s rout, Napier put 450-pound defensive lineman Dees Watson in the backfield for a fourth-and-short carry. He converted the first down.
Shortly after that, Napier fed junior linebacker Anthony Rubio, son of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and the team’s favorite Inspiration, five straight plays until he finished the drive with a 9-yard touchdown.
Almost the entire team ran to the end zone to celebrate with Rubio.
Florida shows its strength. Tennessee vents uncertainty.
Like it or not, the Vols had better come to terms with it.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for the USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X in @MattheisCFB.
