Halzle explains Vols' play-calling process, approach to scripting plays (2024)

Tennessee coach Josh Heupel has been involved in the Vols’ offensive play-calling since arriving in Knoxville almost three years ago. That hasn’t changed since first-year offensive coordinator Joey Halzle’s promotion earlier this year.

Halzle spoke to the Knoxville Quarterback Club on Monday, taking questions from fans ahead of No. 14 Tennessee’s game Saturday at 16th-ranked Missouri. A few of the questions he received had to do with the Vols’ play-calling, and Halzle made it clear that Heupel is still heavily involved in determining what Tennessee runs.

“It’s communal,” Halzle told the group. “It’s like we’ve been saying from the beginning. Coach Heupel, as the head coach and being the architect of this offense, he’s got first, second and third say if he wants it on any type of play. I’m up top and I’m giving him what I’m seeing, what I think we should get to, and Coach Heupel will always have the final say on anything like that.”

In January, after being promoted from quarterbacks coach to fill the vacancy left by former offensive coordinator Alex Golesh’s departure, Halzle told Knoxville’s 99.1 The Sports Animal that Heupel was “always going to be involved with” play-calling.

“Always has been, always will be,” Halzle added, “and like I said, we do things extremely communally and we communicate really well, both in the office and on the headset. We’ll see what the end (result) ends up being there.”

The end result has been much like what Tennessee did during Heupel’s first two years with the Vols. They also haven’t changed their approach to their uptempo system, which forces coaches to make calls quickly. Halzle said the process of picking the next play often starts before the end of a play.

“It’s being called as the guy’s usually being tackled. … You can see it sometimes on the TV copies. You see, when the black sheets go up, like, here it comes,” Halzle said, referring to the black backdrops that allow three members of Tennessee’s staff — one wearing red, another in green and another in blue — to signal in plays.

Halzle also explained Tennessee’s approach to scripting plays going into a game. While some offensive coordinators or coaching staffs might come up with a sequence of plays they want to run during the first drive of a game, or perhaps even two drives, Halzle said the Vols are less scripted by design.

“We don’t script the first 10, 20 because of the way we play, exactly what you were pointing (out),” Halzle said in response to a question from the crowd. “We’re scripting first and second down, usually. … The ball bounces all over the place with all the different ways we like to spread the field. And you can end up on left hash or right hash like that when you didn’t think there was any chance you would. Someone bounces field and (will) reverse on you.

“And if you want to play with tempo, we have to have all that — second, third, fourth thought — right from the beginning. So we’ll try to get, like, a three- or four-play set together and then go from there. And we get so many of what we call unscouted looks, because people could see us differently, that you kind of have to be ready to adjust mid-drive, first drive of the game.

“If a team is all four-down, single-high, or three-down, two-high, all right, what are we getting to right now with this? We don’t want to stop, slow down. … We’ve got to go, so when we’re getting to all these situations, that’s how we have to be able to call plays.

“If you were trying to script too much, it’s like you were saying — if you give your guys, ‘Hey, these are the first 15 plays,’ and then on Play Two they’re on something different, now you’re messing with them, so they know, like, the first couple thoughts that we want to get to. But they’re also used to adjusting, as well, because, ‘Hey, this is not what we practiced. We’re ready for something new, and here it comes.’”