Tennessee’s offseason overhaul under Josh Heupel is showing up in a place that matters a lot: raw speed.
Strength coach Derek Owings, hired away from Indiana after helping build the Hoosiers’ national championship-winning roster, has wasted no time putting his stamp on the Vols. He arrived in Knoxville the day after the championship game and has been working with his staff to lay the groundwork for Tennessee’s 2026 roster. The move came with a big price tag, too - CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz reported that Tennessee made Owings the highest-paid strength coach in the country.
So far, the investment looks like it’s paying off.
In an Instagram post on Wednesday, Owings revealed a startling jump in Tennessee’s speed numbers: the Vols have gone from 12 players to 47 players with a max speed of 21+ miles per hour. That’s nearly four times as many players hitting that mark as before.
Owings laid out his approach in a March conversation with Voice of the Vols’ Mike Keith, saying he trains speed two to three times per week in the offseason.
“One will be a true top-end day, and then right now, because of the yardage we’re getting in other areas, two acceleration days,” Owings detailed.
He also explained the bigger idea behind the program, which is built around exposing players to faster running more often.
“There’s technique, there’s strength, and obviously it’s just getting guys exposure to those speeds,” Owings said. “There’s a lot of kids that have the genetic potential to run fast, but they’ve been so de-trained because they haven’t been exposed to that sprinting in such a long time.
Whether it’s high school, a previous college that wanted to live in, hey, more mental toughness- I’d say whether its 300s, gassers, stadiums. And they get de-trained because they don’t get those exposures to high speeds.
It’s getting them back, getting them strong, putting them in good positions, hammering technique, and then getting them to run fast multiple times a week. And then you improve speed, but you also kind of get some of that genetic potential back.”
That process is built on tracking everything through analytics and data, and Owings said the goal doesn’t stop once camp starts. In the same interview, he described how Tennessee plans to keep speed work baked into the season.
“When we look at in-season, we’ve gotten to the end of July, we’re starting camp. In our GPS, we’ll have a rolling five- to seven-day, basically, average, where if a guy has not hit 90% of his individual max, we’ve got to find a way to bake it into practice,” Owings said. “Whether it’s organically on a go-ball in 7-on-7, maybe it’s a special teams cover rep, or maybe it’s off to the side, having guys hit a build-up, we want to make sure we’re keeping those exposures every single week so that they have that speed on Saturday.”
The idea is not just to build Tennessee up in the offseason and hope it lasts. The plan is to keep those speed numbers alive, and even push them higher, once the games begin.
Josh Heupel said the buy-in is already there.
“As much as anything, him spearheading nutrition, training room, everybody being in sync, the growth that our players have seen from mass, explosive power, speed, and acceleration, the tangible differences that they’ve seen, our players are fully bought into it,” Heupel said during SEC Media Days this week. “Have seen great changes and are excited about what work they’ve put in and the benefit of that.”
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Rick Barnes Addressed Growing Concern Around Key Tennessee Transfer
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Barnes has tried to calm any concern around the new addition by stressing that Tennessee is being careful with how it handles Lundblade. The Vols want him ready for the long haul, and the tone around the program suggests this is more about patience than alarm as summer work continues. [Read more 🡒]
Tennessee Looks Poised For Another In-State Recruiting Win
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The momentum around Barnes has only grown as his decision approaches on July 29, with a couple of national recruiting voices already leaning heavily toward Tennessee to land him. For a program that has made a point of chasing top local talent, Barnes would fit the kind of in-state win the Vols have tried to stack up, even if the final word still has to come from the prospect himself. [Read more 🡒]