We all know the numbers, and they are staggering. No. 1 Tennessee’s offense is in the top three nationally in most major categories heading into the game Saturday at No. 3 Georgia, from total offense to scoring to pass efficiency.
More than anything, the Vols are built on the long ball behind quarterback Hendon Hooker. Their 30 completions on passes thrown 20-plus yards downfield are tied for the national lead, per TruMedia. They rank third nationally in yards per play (7.4) and second in yards per pass attempt (10.4). And they have registered 59 explosive passes of 15 yards or more, for an explosive play percentage of 19.1. About one in every five completions turns into a big play.
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All of this explosivity — and 64 percent of the Vols’ entire offensive output this season — is based around one concept: the deep choice. It’s the bedrock of head coach Josh Heupel’s system, one that he carried with him from his days at UCF, although it’s not entirely Heupel’s intellectual property. This package is an offshoot of former Baylor coach Art Briles’ system.
Heupel has reformed it, and like many systems in college football, it has gone through a continual reformation process to get it to the peak it’s at entering the trip to Athens. But unlike the West Coast or run-and-shoot offense, Heupel’s offense is not complicated.
I talked to several defensive coordinators who have tried to impede this juggernaut and connected with a few lower-level disciples of the Heupel system, who have spent hours drawing up this scheme on cocktail napkins in backroom clinics, to give me insight into how this system is run and why it’s so explosive.
The system
This is a receiver-driven system, one that differs significantly from the QB-driven West Coast and run-and-shoot-style offenses. Receivers in Knoxville are taught to be fast and decisive, attacking a defender’s leverage wherever it’s given. Less is placed on pre-snap coverage and more on the post-snap reaction of defenders.
Velus Jones Jr., now a receiver for the Chicago Bears, transferred to Tennessee from USC and caught 62 passes for 807 yards in 2021.
“The most challenging part for me was to stop thinking so much,” he said. “Coming from a West Coast system, you get used to looking at coverage and pre-snapping everything. Now it’s just about being fast and being decisive.”
Rule 1 in the receiver room is to get off the ball like your hair is on fire. And that starts with a 10-yard vertical stem, followed by a route adjustment based on the leverage and reaction of the defender. While the subject of this analysis is the deep choice concept, every route in this system (aside from a quick screen that Tennessee runs quite a bit) is about breaking the cushion of the defender covering you — clearly not a problem for star receivers like Jalin Hyatt, a former high school track star with a verified 4.31 40-yard time. Then you’re playing off a reaction and taking what the defense gives you.
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“It’s all about speed,” Jones said. “Run, have fun and be dangerous when the ball is in your hands. In this system, you never make a wrong decision, but you can make a better decision to catch a touchdown instead of a 15-yard pass. It’s about making the best choice, not the right choice.”
The tempo
You can’t talk about Tennessee’s offense without talking about its tempo. The Vols rank fourth in the FBS in fewest seconds per snap (21.4), per TruMedia. Even the ball boys are sprinting down the field to collect the footballs after incompletions.
It doesn’t matter what coverage a defense is playing if they can’t get lined up. As one opposing defensive coordinator told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity for competitive reasons: “I knew the plays they were going to call and it still didn’t matter. They were that fast.”
It forces defenses to be simple. So simple that another defensive coordinator who has faced Tennessee told me that he cycled through only five defensive calls for the entire game and he practiced them all week in sequential order so that nothing needed to be called from the sideline.
“All we did in practice all week was work on getting things communicated and getting lined up,” a second opposing defensive coordinator said. “We just wanted our kids to line up and go play.”
Getting lined up is one thing. Couple that with inherent mismatches on the perimeter, and it’s a recipe for defensive disaster.
The formations
Briles’ fingerprints are all over this system, and it begins with the width of the receiver splits on the perimeter. When the ball is in the middle of the field, the widest receiver will be outside the numbers, roughly five yards from the sideline — and sometimes even tighter to it.
When the ball is on the hash, the receiver to the field side will align on the bottom of the numbers, several yards wider than the standard top-of-the-numbers split for most offenses.
For most programs, the widest receiver to the field side is eye candy, rarely touching the ball. But at Tennessee, Hooker has a big enough arm to get him the ball, and he often does. Those field throws are common in the Vols’ package. This kind of spacing is the catalyst of the deep choice package.
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The premise of the deep choice menu is to put the receiver on an island, and that island only expands with the wider split. So, regardless of the defensive coverage called, it’s going to be a one-on-one. If a receiver in this system doesn’t have the proper spacing, the safety can roll and help on the route or an interior linebacker can buzz underneath the route and cut off the throw, negating the 50/50 ball opportunity.
And often the Vols can protect big leads in the fourth quarter because the outside linebackers start creeping wider, opening up run lanes in the box for backs like Jaylen Wright and Jabari Small or for Hooker in QB draw concepts. Let’s not forget that the Vols are averaging a shade under 200 yards per game on the ground as well.
How it’s formatted
The deep choice menu starts with a tag, and it presents two options for offensive coordinator Alex Golesh: the inside choice tag and the outside choice tag. There’s a built-in menu associated with each, but in either case, the sole purpose of the adjacent receiver next to the tag is to clear the top off the coverage, which is coach speak for getting the heck out of the way.
So, when this concept is signaled from the sideline, there is one target and only one target. It’s not a full-field progression read from the quarterback that is common in most West Coast systems. This is why when you look to the opposite end of the field, receivers aren’t even getting off the ball. They are simply conserving their energy for when they get tagged.
And it’s rumored that when Golesh scripts his game plan each week, he already knows which receivers are going to be live and which are going to be dead based on ball location from the previous play.
The outside “choice” menu
When “choice” is signaled to the outside receiver (X or Z), he will be tasked with the following three actions based on the reaction of the defender, usually the cornerback. Again, this starts with a 10-yard vertical stem.
‘If he’s even, I’m leaving’
If the receiver gets right on top of the corner within 10 yards, he will run by him, producing a pure vertical concept. And it doesn’t matter how tight that receiver is from the sideline. In many cases this season, defenders have pushed receivers out of bounds, before they come back in to make a catch. It’s not a penalty.
It’s important to note that these aren’t back-shoulder fade balls. Oftentimes, Hooker is purposely lofting balls, allowing receivers like Hyatt and Bru McCoy to get underneath them.
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‘Coverage on top … stop and drop’
If the receiver can’t get even with the cornerback within that 10-yard stem, he’s simply going to put the brakes on and come right back down the stem, which resembles a stop or a curl route. And there aren’t many teams better at coming back to the ball than the Vols.
‘Coverage outside … post it’
The third and final deep choice menu from the exterior receiver is to post the middle of the field when the defender’s leverage is outside. While these routes are usually more productive from interior alignments, the Vols do garner some explosive plays against middle-of-the-field open coverage, where there is a split safety look.
On all of these tags, the inside receiver’s rule is to grab the alley defender and get covered by occupying the overhang linebacker or safety. So, in real time it may resemble a dig/post concept because the slot will work across the face of the safety while the outside receiver works his rules and posts it. But in reality, it’s just an outside choice.
Inside receiver choice menu
Much of this offense is built around the slot position. With Hyatt aligning there on more than 90 percent of snaps this season, the slot is where most of these explosive plays occur. So, when the slot is tagged with the choice concept, the outside receiver runs a locked hitch, which is a shorter route to occupy the corner.
‘If he’s even, I’m leaving’
If the inside receiver gets even with the coverage at the 10-yard mark of demarcation, it converts to a slot fade concept, which is one of the more lethal concepts in the Vols’ attack.
‘Bend it vs. buzz or blitz’
As the inside receiver works his stem and the overhang defender either “blitzes” or “buzzes” downhill, he will look to occupy that vacated area immediately. While this may look like an RPO in most systems, in Tennessee’s it’s not. It’s purely a run-to-grass mentality.
It’s important to note that if the overhang doesn’t buzz or blitz, the slot receiver will still look to “bend” around him into vacated space. It’s a common answer against quarters coverage, which Tennessee has seen on more than 39 percent of snaps this season.
‘Coverage outside … post it’
Finally, if the defender maintains outside leverage, then the choice adjusts to a post in the middle of the field.
It’s clear that in this system there aren’t a ton of coaching points on these choice routes. Receivers are coached to have freedom in choosing the optimal route, and the quarterback has to react.
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How it’s formationed
Stack formation
The deep choice menu earns its keep in stack formations, which Tennessee has lined up in on 71 snaps. Nearly half of those snaps were called built-in choice routes to the bottom stack receiver, usually Hyatt. The other half has been a mix of quick screens or screen concepts.
While there may be a tendency based on the width of the stack from the sideline (the wider the stack, the more likely a screen is due to spacing) the Vols have generated several explosive plays by tagging the back receiver on the choice route, including the game-winner to Cedric Tillman in overtime against Pittsburgh in Week 2.
Here a defense has only two options to defend the stack. One is to “top hat” it, which means the pressed defender plays the bottom half of the stack, which was the case in Pittsburgh. The problem with this is that the 10-yard mark of demarcation of these choice concepts is shrunk to zero because the defender is right on top of the receiver, allowing the Vols’ athletic receivers to “stack” or get on top of defenders.
The only other coverage option is to play some sort of in-and-out zone against the stack. When Golesh knows it, he’ll tag the choice route to the point receiver in the stack (usually Hyatt), who in the picture below from the same game will work his bend rules against open space in the zone.
“Our plan was to try and mix it up on them because once they identified how you are playing the stack they would go to the other option,” the second opposing defensive coordinator said.
“You have to change how you play the stack.”
Tennessee will utilize the stack option choice from 3×1 sets by stacking the two innermost receivers. The outside receiver runs the clear out to occupy the corner, while Nos. 2 and 3 work the choice game off the overhang defender and safety. In the illustration below against Florida, it’s Hyatt who works his “post-it” rule vs. an outside leverage defender.
Motion to stack
Another tool in Golesh and Heupel’s toolbox is to use motion in and out of the stack formation. The Vols have used it on 28 percent of snaps. And of the 102 snaps using this motion, 38 percent have been choice routes. The intent is to create quick indecision and put pressure on the secondary.
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“They motion out of that system better than anyone else that tries to run it; that’s where you get the confusion and miscommunication in the guys in the secondary,” the coordinator said.
This is done in two ways. One is a quick motion to the stack position, which forces a defense to quickly communicate their coverage before the ball is snapped.
They will also start in the stack and quickly motion out of it. This, again, forces a defense to quickly communicate any adjustment at the line of scrimmage before the Vols snap the ball in their fastball tempo.
The difference: Hendon Hooker’s mobility
Sure, scheme is scheme and these choice routes have been part of Heupel’s repertoire since his days at UCF. But it’s inarguable the difference this season as to why this system is so dynamic lies in the development of Hooker, who has taken ownership of this offense in his second year running it, catapulting him into Heisman favorite status heading into Saturday’s game.
“You watch him last year and he would sail a ball or put one in the dirt,” the coordinator told me. “He doesn’t miss any throws now.”
But it’s not just Hooker making accurate throws; it’s making accurate decisions when things break down that’s the difference. He’s rushing for 42 yards per game this season, many of them on conversions when back-end coverage has everything shored up.
“For the first time since RG3 at Baylor, we’re seeing a quarterback that can not only hurt you with his arm, but if the choice concepts aren’t there, he can kill you with his legs,” the first opposing defensive coordinator told me.
Frustrated coordinators have recalled countless drives this season where they would play coverage in second- and third-and-long situations to match all potential route distributions, only to have Hooker run through seams in the pass rush.
The game plan
The Vols will meet a Georgia defense that is ranked second in scoring defense (10.5 points per game) and third in passing efficiency defense (103.1). The consensus from coaches I spoke with is the only way you can beat Tennessee is if you can match the Vols in the secondary. And while the Dawgs haven’t seen the type of athletes on the perimeter like Hyatt and McCoy, they just may have the personnel on the back end to at least constrict the space necessary for these deep-choice routes to have any efficiency.
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Jones said at the beginning of each week the receivers meet with Hooker to find a weak link in coverage they can pick on.
“That plays a big part in our success because you were able to communicate with your quarterback on how he will play our routes,” he said. “That became the recipe for success.”
Georgia may not have many weak links in the secondary — and certainly none at safety with free safety Malaki Starks and strong safety Chris Smith combining for four interceptions and eight pass breakups. So, a choice has to be made by co-defensive coordinators Will Muschamp and Glenn Schumann as to whether they will lean on more zone or man concepts to disrupt this Tennessee offense.
While there may not be an indication as to what game plan Georgia will go with, there may be a tell based on the depth of Hooker’s in-pocket launch point. Because there is no full-field read progression in these choice routes, there is limited footwork from Hooker. He seems to take one step, hang and hold while waiting for the receiver to make his decision on his route.
If the Georgia staff is going to dial up pressure Saturday, expect it to use some form of interior movement with the intent of pushing Hooker off his launch point. It’s something that Florida was able to do in September, which resulted in two potential sack opportunities — one that caused a fumble.
If Georgia elects to play more coverage options against Hooker, expect the drop-eight variety, from a quarters coverage structure, the Bulldogs’ base coverage. It’s perfect coverage when two of your better players are your safeties. Last season, Alabama had a good deal of success playing drop-eight coverage from a mint front, sacking Hooker with only a three-man rush.
It is something that Georgia showed against Samford, an FCS opponent early in the year that ran a similar system, in a 33-0 win.
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Conclusion
In most cases, all defenses want to do is match hats (one defender for one offender) and play 11-on-11 football. That methodology hasn’t boded well against Tennessee when its hats are often better than yours.
But the talent pool may be even in Athens, and it may come down to not just stopping, but outscoring the Tennessee offense on Saturday. It’s a tall task, even for Georgia.
(Top photo of Hendon Hooker and Josh Heupel: Randy Sartin / USA Today)
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