Josh Heupel Has Failed Everywhere He Has Been
To call Josh Heupel an idiot would be an insult to idiots. Before the season, I received two texts from people close to UCF football. The texts essentially boiled down to about how much of a mess the football team was. That Josh Heupel was in charge of a sinking ship and it was all his fault. I dismissed those texts as these were the only people that had complained about what was going on in Orlando. Boy do I feel dumb. After watching this season I have come to one conclusion: Josh Heupel shouldn’t be coaching a middle school team let alone in college. The man is the definition of a failure. He was fired by Oklahoma, his alma mater, because he was too stupid to adapt his game plan or recruit. Then he was mediocre at a Missouri only putting up good numbers against teams with .500 or sub .500 records. And we all know the disaster that was his three years at UCF. Every single year his teams regressed. Now he is at Tennessee and appears to be in way over his head.
I will talk about exactly why Heupel failed at UCF in a bit, but let’s check in on how the hippo is doing in Knoxville. Let’s see players being arrested for drug deal gone wrong, Heupel pissing off families of players by showing how ignorant and stupid he is, the hippo striking out on every 4 and 5 star prospects and having to grab “projects.” You will find that all of these issues at Tennessee have plagued Heupel throughout his career even as OC. He hasn’t learned, has not adapted himself to different stops. Instead he has, privately, blamed players for not “getting his system.” But what Heupel fails to realize is that his system is a failure especially as a head coach. In fact Paul Wolff is someone Josh Heupel aspires to be. Tennessee is now seeing that Josh Heupel is already in way over his head. Get used to it Vols fans.
People look at Josh Heupel’s record and think. that he could not have been a failure. That UCF fans are being ridiculous running a coach who won 28 games out of town. But let’s dive a little bit deeper than that shall we? Ok we all know that UCF put up a lot of points under Josh Heupel. However, that is misleading. Heupel’s offense put up big numbers against bad numbers. This was the same complaint Oklahoma and Missouri fans had about Heupel. Consider this: UCF averaged a touchdown less against teams with winning records vs teams with non winning records the past 2 years. Heupel’s record against teams with winning records during that span? 2–8. He is nothing, but a stat padder. His offensive genius only shows up when he plays bad teams. This is his main folly as Heupel refuses to adapt to situations. He is so convinced that his offense can beat any opponent. Yet against physical teams, that offense didn’t work. Look at the BYU and Tulsa games, those were the lowest point totals last year? That was because Heupel literally ran the same scripted plays over and over again. He never thought to change it up. Instead he was too arrogant and it cost UCF. So before you pull an Athletic and just go “oh look an explosive offense” you need to dig deeper.
Josh Heupel has no idea how to be a CEO. Danny White, twice, has had to hire him a defensive staff. He is solely just focused on one end of the ball and that’s the offensive end. It’s been well documented that the UCF coaching staff was cut in half under Heupel. This means that the team had two head coaches. Heupel ran the offense and Shannon coached the defense. So Josh Heupel had no control over an entire unit of his team. Does this sound like a “smart guy” or someone that was a stupid arrogant prick? I would go with the latter. Josh Heupel showed a blatant disregard for a whole side of the ball. Please name for me a successful head coach that completely forgets that one whole side of the ball exists? I can’t think of any of the greats that have done this. Oh and Tennessee fans if you think this doesn’t happen just look at how much of a disaster your defensive coordinator search was. It took Danny White how long to find a. fool to team up with Heupel? There’s a reason for that. It has to d9 with the fact that it’s known that Heupel is not a good head coach.
The man had a disasterous lockeroom. The locker room was split between the offensive and defensive players. Heupel and his staff did not even truly interact with the defensive players. They didn’t see a need to do so. All they were concerned with was trying to cater to the offensive players. Well except if your name was McKenzie Milton. Everyone knows how important McKenzie is to UCF lore. He’s a legend that will go down as arguably the most beloved player in UCF history. This made Josh Heupel jealous as he did not want anyone from the Frost era to outshine HIS players. For being a rather large man, Heupel had a gigantic Napoleon complex. That’s why he ignored the fact that Alex Golesh was going around bashing Milton. It has been confirmed by players and by Milton’s own mother that Golesh referred to McKenzie as a gimp on multiple occasions. So what did Josh Heupel do? Nothing. He just let this go and just say back. Now you wonder why players were leaving. The man has no idea how to manage a roster. He didn’t know how to do it at Oklahoma or Missouri either. Just read the horror stories players had about Heupel. He can’t handle dealing with players.
This comes from the fact that Heupel has the personality of a dead fish. Seriously just trying to sit through an interview with Heupel was the equivalent of water boarding. He had no personality, you could tell that this man is not a leader. Instead of conveying a sense of importance and leadership. Instead he looked and sounded like a dead fish. Someone that could easily be walked over by other coaches. That is exactly what happened. Make no mistake about this friends: Josh Heupel was pushed out of Florida recruiting. The more aggressive coaches, like Marcus Freeman, took advantage of how soft and dead of a fish Heupel is. Freeman, along with the likes of Neal Brown, are young and energetic. They knew that players respond well to someone with dynamic personalities. Heupel doesn’t have one. That’s why at UCF he had the inability to recruit the state. Hell he was recruiting Germany better than he recruited Florida. Consider this: Gus Malzahn is going to have a 5 star high school recruit come visit UCF. That is the difference between a coach with a personality and one who does not have one.
Fun fact: In the 4 recruiting cycles Josh Heupel had at UCF, he only signed 2 top 500 players Since he left, UCF has got commitments from two top 500 players. For comparison sake, Scott Frost signed 4. So clearly it’s not a UCF issue. In fact let us just check in on how Heupel is doing in recruiting at Tennessee: https://twitter.com/GoVolsXtra/status/1377259403930447885. Oh that doesn’t seem good. If only there was any way people could find out that Heupel can’t recruit. Consider this: Josh Heupel never landed a four star at UCF. In fact in his first year, you know the year UCF was coming off an undefeated season, Heupel went 0–52 on four star recruits. Then after Heupel left UCF got a four star recruit a week later. Gus Malzahn has signed more offensive linemen from Florida than Heupel did last year. I don’t know what other metric you want to use, but Josh Heupel absolutely sucked at recruiting at UCF. Now some will be like “but he had UCF’s highest class”, however that because Titus committed after Heupel left. So he technically gets credit for the class even though the highest rated recruit committed to UCF after he left the program.
Jim Rome recently called Josh Heupel a “smart guy.” Poor Jim Rome, I didn’t know he had some sort of brain disease that whipped out his intelligence. I will have to send him flowers. You cannot look deep into Heupel’s coaching career and call him anything, but a failure. The man cannot run a football program. And Tennessee will find that out soon enough.
