Five Touchdowns, One Debut: Faizon Brandon Ties a Tennessee Freshman Record

Josh Heupel has coached 66 games at Tennessee. Eleven of them have produced 600 yards of offense. Saturday's 56-9 dismantling of Furman at Neyland Stadium was the latest, and it came with a quarterback making his first college start.

Faizon Brandon completed 13 of 17 passes for 226 yards and three touchdowns, then added 68 rushing yards and two more scores on the ground. Five total touchdowns ties the program's freshman record, a mark shared by Casey Clausen in 2000 and Tyler Bray in 2010. Brandon did it in three quarters of work against an FCS opponent, which is the necessary caveat, but the ease of it was the story. He was not surviving the offense. He was running it.

Mike Matthews was the other headline. Four catches, 132 yards, and touchdown receptions of 55 and 57 yards, both of them the kind of vertical shot Heupel's system is built to produce when the quarterback trusts his arm. The ground game did the rest: DeSean Bishop went for 97 yards and a score on 14 carries, and Justin Baker added 89 yards including a 73-yard touchdown run.

The defensive line had its own moment. Xavier Gilliam finished with six tackles, five of them for loss, and three sacks, the first Vol with three or more sacks in a game since Darrell Taylor in 2018. Furman managed nine points and not much else.

The AP voters were unmoved, holding Tennessee at No. 18 in the Week 2 poll, and that is fair. The first real read on Brandon comes Saturday night in Atlanta, where the Vols visit Georgia Tech at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. Georgia Tech's defense will blitz a freshman on the road. How Brandon handles that will tell us more than five touchdowns against Furman ever could.