The NFL Draft Shows the Failure of the Josh Heupel Error
UCF had 5 players drafted in 2021. This is the most players UCF has ever had drafted. This should be a great celebration for the program, right? Well it is and it isn’t. Yes, this draft shows that UCF has built a tremendous respect as a program. No other G5 team had as many players drafted in the past 5 years. This is a huge accomplishment for the Knights. But this also shows something that people don’t want to talk about: Josh Heupel wasted these players. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as Heupel and his staph were completely out of their depth. They couldn’t get the best out of the players. This team underachieved so much last year and the draft proved that.
This was a historic draft for the Knights. To have these many players drafted for UCF is huge. Richie Grant, Aaron Robinson, Jacob Harris, Tay Gowan, and Tre Nixon all were drafted. Heck Marlon Williams should have been drafted as well, but went as a UDFA to the Texans. This is a clear statement that this UCF program is really getting respect on a national stage. UCF had more draft picks this year than every single team in the G5 including the mighty Cincinnati. But more than that, UCF had more draft picks than 79% of the Big Ten, 80% of the Big 12, 79% of the ACC, 75% of the PAC 12, and 54% of the SEC. Now UCF can go around and say to recruits that “see you can be a UCF knight and get drafted.” This is huge for the program. You can bet that Gus Malzahn and his brilliant staff are already in recruits ears trying to use these stats to convince players to come to Orlando.
But there is a caveat to all of this. A question that has come up a lot after this draft: how the hell did this team underachieve? It’s clear that there was a lot of talent on this roster thanks to Scott Frost. But the team just couldn’t put it together for the last two years. How did this team perform so badly especially last year? Take Covid out of it there was another reason for the team performing so badly. That reason is Josh Heupel. If you didn’t need anymore reason to see that Heupel the Hutt was totally and utterly outclassed and overwhelmed last year just look at the quality of talent he inherited. Yet Heupel was unable to get the best out of this talent. His stupidity completely neutered a talented roster. This team should have been the top team in the AAC the past two seasons based on talent alone. Yet Heupel squandered it all.
Heupel has a long history of wasting talent at every stop he’s had. At Oklahoma that was one of the many reasons why Josh Heupel was fired. He could not utilize the talent that was handed to him. The same at Missouri and now UCF. The wasting of talent at UCF might be his most egregious yet. He had a team loaded with draft picks. In fact from 2018–2021 UCF had the most draft picks of any G5 team. How the hell didn’t UCF win at least a conference title the last two years? That is because Josh Heupel cannot win with talent and expectations. Again look throughout his coaching history. He’s had talented teams and never achieved with them. The 2021 group of players drafted from UCF underscores this. This is just another reason why Danny White hiring him was such a big mistake. If these kids had the right coach with them, then they would have achieved more as a team.
I feel bad for players like Jordan Johnson. Johnson should have been drafted last year. He had all the potential in the world. Yet Josh Heupel and his idiot offensive line coach ruined Johnson. Completely tanked his career because they did not coach Johnson up properly. I don’t know what Glen Ellarbee was doing, but whatever happened did not work. You can point directly to Jordan Johnson as being a player who had his future screwed by Josh Heupel. Otis Anderson also falls into this category. Anderson had all the potential in the world to be a NFL draft pick. He had shown that his freshman and sophomores years. He was explosive and tough. He could be used as a Swiss Army knife if he was used properly. Let him get outside and use that explosive speed and shiftiness. So what did Josh Heupel do? He tried to convert Otis to a wide receiver. There were no pitches/sweeps or use of Otis on the outside. Instead Josh Heupel tried to just run Otis into the middle like a battering ram. That’s not Otis game and it showed. That’s why he wasn’t drafted because Heupel couldn’t use him effectively.
This draft was historic for UCF. It’s going to help the Knights recruit. Now Gus and his staff can bring all of these stats and facts to the recruits. It’s a great recruiting tool. It also shows that the UCF program has garnered respect from the NFL. There have been numerous players to have ties to UCF in the NFL, but this 2021 group were the most drafted players from the program. When we talk about winners and losers from the draft, UCF was the big winner. The biggest loser, and this shouldn’t be a surprise, was Josh Heupel. This showed that UCF had the talent to be a juggernaut, but Heupel managed to screw it up. Of that is not the biggest indictment of his coaching career then I don’t know what is.
