Category Archives: Football

Here’s where we’ve stood heading into the first three Saturdays of the year in expected win totals:

• Week 1: 6.74 wins
• Week 2: 6.60
• Week 3: 5.94

The Vols had no problem with Tennessee Tech, but are still more of a mystery than we were counting on after three weeks. Tennessee now has a Top 25 defense and a Top 10 special teams unit in SP+. But the offense continues to face question marks at just about every position group that isn’t…tight end, which was probably the least certain coming into the year. Jacob Warren leads the Vols in receptions with nine, and Princeton Fant is tied for second with six.

Last week, our community gave the Vols a 22.7% chance to beat Florida. Let’s see how you’re feeling about that, and everything else, this week:

You can’t go back, of course, but Pittsburgh’s 44-41 loss to Western Michigan certainly didn’t give us the warm fuzzies. Looking forward:

• Worse, but we’ll talk ourselves into it anyway: Florida was impressive and had very real chances to take down Alabama. The Gators can easily tell themselves they still control their own destiny: get to Atlanta, get revenge, make the playoff. Or, you know, they could still be let down and come out slow against us on Saturday night.
• Better by way of the above: I don’t know that anyone is giving Tennessee a significant chance to beat Alabama, but your number probably isn’t going down this week.
• Better by way of Chattanooga: Kentucky made Tennessee’s win over a Volunteer State FCS foe look even better, as the Mocs took away their running attack and had their chances to score a monumental upset.
• About the same: Lots here this week: Georgia did what you thought they would to South Carolina, Missouri handled their FCS business, Vanderbilt lost 41-23 to Stanford, and Ole Miss beat Tulane past my bedtime.

Last season, Princeton Fant caught 12 passes for 103 yards. Jacob Warren had six for 73, a grand tight end total of 18 catches for 176 yards.

This season, in two games between them: 11 catches for 112 yards.

Those 11 catches currently represent 35% of Tennessee’s total receptions, a truly wild statistic that surely will come down as the season plays on. This is not a specific feature of a Josh Heupel offense; quite the opposite, in fact. Via SportSource Analytics, last year Jake Hescock led all UCF tight ends with…9 catches for 42 yards. The year before: 9 for 87.

If you track Tennessee’s pass distribution from 2010-20, it averages out to 63% of receptions going to wide receivers, 23% to running backs, and 14% to tight ends. The biggest outliers at tight end during that time: 2016, when Jason Croom shifted to tight end and joined Ethan Wolf in getting 21 catches apiece for 19% of the receptions. And 2010, when Luke Stocker caught 39 passes by himself, and tight ends accounted for 21% of the total.

Those 39 for Stocker in 2010 are two behind the school record, held by Chris Brown with 41 in 2007. Also tied for second place with 39: Mychal Rivera in 2012, and Jason Witten in 2002. That’s the three catches per game pace both Warren and Fant are chasing early.

How long will it last? The most important thing for Tennessee’s offense, obviously, is to start connecting with receivers downfield. At UCF, Heupel’s offense averaged 76% of completions to wide receivers, with 18% to backs and just 6% to tight ends. Those opportunities have been there for the Vol receiving corps, but so far have fallen incomplete. Credit the coach for adaptation, and both Princeton Fant and Jacob Warren for not just being ready, but being difference makers against Pitt when their number was called.

With the loss to Pitt, it’s a pretty safe bet that our community expected win total is going south of 7 after rounding up. We’ve spent the first two weeks at 6.74 and 6.60, but now the real question will be how many of us will dip into the 5’s this week. You know the drill:

If Pitt is good-to-great, we probably won’t know it for a minute. The Panthers’ next four weeks go Western Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia Tech, bye week. Until then, here’s how you might be feeling about the rest of Tennessee’s schedule this week:

• About the same: Florida, probably, depending on how many Anthony Richardson highlights you watch and/or how much you think Dan Mullen will play him and/or how much you value non-Central directional Florida schools as opponents. You know how to value Alabama, which is to say we may not learn anything about the Gators this week either. South Carolina struggled early but rallied late to beat East Carolina. Georgia ran through UAB.
• Probably worse: Ole Miss, and definitely worse since we last turned loose the win total machine before their game against Louisville last Monday night. The Rebels get Tulane, Alabama, and Arkansas before coming to Neyland, so there’s some time for opinion forming still. Somehow Kentucky and Missouri accomplished the rare feat of playing against each other and making me feel worse about our chances of beating either of them. The Tigers become the next big opportunity to move toward six wins; they’re at Boston College the week before hosting us, so we’ll see if things change between now and then on their end. And a late-night kudos to Vanderbilt, undefeated in FBS play.

What is the most important piece of information from this game?

Tennessee’s offense lost its starting quarterback midway through the second quarter, its 1B tailback to health protocols, its 1A tailback after eight carries, a starting wide receiver on the second possession, and its starting center to an ankle sprain last week. The bulk of the work today was done by the backup quarterback, a true freshman tailback, receivers who combined to catch just seven passes, and two tight ends who caught nine…or half of their total from last season.

But that group got 374 yards at 5.67 per play, and 34 points. In the last four years, the Vols have scored more than 34 points in regulation against the following FBS foes: 2020 Missouri (35) and Vanderbilt (42), 2019 South Carolina (41 with two special teams scores)…and last Thursday.

That group also turned it over thrice, each of them deadly: the two fumbles by the quarterbacks gave Pitt the ball inside the UT 30, and of course Hooker’s interception came inside the Pitt 35 with a chance to tie the game. They also got real frustrating inside the red zone, which is what cost UCF against Pitt two years ago. In that one the Knights scored two touchdowns in five appearances inside the 20. Today, the Vols cashed in on the blocked punt right away, then kicked a field goal on 4th-and-3 from exactly the 20 yard line for a 10-0 lead. But after that: 1st-and-Goal at the Pitt 5 turned into a 48-yard field goal. (Shout out Chase McGrath, whose kicks get you through at least denial and anger and well into bargaining before they decide to go in.)

The Vols got a red zone score late in the third from Hooker to Jacob Warren, and another when Jaylen Wright got in from the one. But after a dubious spot on third down, the Vols were denied on 4th-and-1 at the three yard line with six minutes to play. In the books, that’s three touchdowns in six red zone appearances, plus the final interception from the Pitt 34.

In this way, it actually does feel a bit like the offense-first version of Lane Kiffin’s Week 2 against UCLA, which is how it looked to most of us from months away. Lots of turnovers, a stone cold fourth down stop late, quarterback questions, etc. As we pointed out this week, the Vols were 10-point favorites in that one. Today was a toss-up, the earliest that kind of temperature reading has come for any of these year one coaches in Tennessee’s rebuild. And it was true to form, with Pitt winning 41-34.

But given those three turnovers, is there something meaningful we can take away from this on the positive side?

Add in the 13 penalties (two shy of the school record via the media guide) for 134 yards – let’s see how long that sticks around to see its true meaning – and there’s room for, “Well, if we don’t turn it over three times and commit a thousand penalties…” or, “Well, if we get healthy…”.

This is hard to figure out too, because we don’t know Pitt. We’re unsure how good they are, though I thought Kenny Pickett was very much that today, and so we don’t know exactly what to trust here. Even more than you expect after just week two. Much more than you expect after this kind of toss-up.

And perhaps the biggest curiosity: Tennessee’s defense, which gave up 41 points and didn’t force a turnover…but stopped Pitt on third down a dozen times. Some of this is we don’t know how to watch this kind of football wearing an orange jersey yet: Pitt got 397 yards, but did so on 82 plays, just 4.8 yards per play. If the name of the game with Heupel is possessions, the Tennessee defense opened the game with three straight three-and-outs, then made Pitt kick field goals in the red zone twice in the second quarter to keep the Vols in it. They opened the third quarter with another three-and-out. And then they scored three more on crucial possessions after the Vols cut the lead to seven twice and were stopped on fourth down late.

I think the defense – also playing without Byron Young for the last time – did its job today. That’s encouraging.

What do we know for sure? We need to take this team’s temperature again in Gainesville.

The Gators, now perhaps in a quarterback controversy of a different sort, are likely to offer few hints before then since they play Alabama next week while the Vols host Tennessee Tech. But we might at least get a sense of Joe Milton vs Hendon Hooker in that one.

We thought we’d learn a lot, but the volume of backup names, turnovers, and penalties makes that all harder to trust. I think Tennessee’s defense did a good job, but let’s see it again in two weeks. I think Josh Heupel did a good job putting us in position to execute today, but we’ll get plenty more data on that. One challenge for him that he perhaps experienced at Missouri, but not as the head coach at UCF: the Vols played their butts off today. But we’ve lost a lot, and even with some unhappy players already out via the transfer portal, those butts are harder to play off if you keep losing. If he can keep this team together and playing hard, I’m hopeful the most important thing – moving forward – will follow.

Go Vols.

Our community Expected Win Total Machine has the Vols at 6.60 projected wins this week, down just a hair from 6.74 a week ago. This reflects the conversations I bet you’ve had this week: yeah, we won by 32, but it didn’t look great all the time. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh got all the good feelings out in their 51-7 win over UMass. And so, right on cue with SP+ and the opening line in Vegas, this week our community gives the Vols a 49.2% chance to win on Saturday. That’s down from 58.4% last week.

Much of that comedown involves Tennessee’s passing game. Against Bowling Green, the Vols had 64 rushing attempts and 24 passing attempts, running the ball on 72.73% of their snaps. It’s not a byproduct of the blowout: Hendon Hooker got a pass attempt when he came in the game with 2:33 to play, Joe Milton’s touchdown to Cedric Tillman was on the series before, and Heupel tends to keep running his offense.

But Tennessee’s 72.73% run ratio was higher than any game Heupel coached at UCF. If you look at the highest run ratios from his time there, almost all of them correlate to uncertainty at quarterback:

Opponent	Year	Run	Run Pct.	Pass	Pass Pct.
Bowling Green	2021	64	72.73%	24	27.27%
ECU	2018	55	72.37%	21	27.63%
Navy	2018	52	71.23%	21	28.77%
USF	2018	58	70.73%	24	29.27%
Florida Atlantic	2019	47	70.15%	20	29.85%
Memphis	2018	62	68.89%	28	31.11%

• Against East Carolina in 2018, McKenzie Milton was a late scratch after tweaking his ankle the week before. Darriel Mack got the start and went 12-of-20 for just 69 yards. But the Knights won easily 37-10.
• The only one of these that doesn’t involve quarterback uncertainty is the 2018 Navy game, but that one might be attributed to Navy being Navy. The Midshipmen ran it 63 times and threw it twice; UCF may have responded in kind in a game when tempo going against them would’ve been especially damaging. It worked: UCF won 35-24.
• 2018 South Florida is the game Milton was seriously injured in, going down after just 10 pass attempts. It was again Mack off the bench, this time going just 5-of-14 for 81 yards. But again, it was no threat: UCF won 38-10 against a 7-5 South Florida squad to finish the regular season undefeated again.
• 2019 against FAU and Lane Kiffin was the first start for freshman Dillon Gabriel. He went just 7-of-19…but dropped bombs on his completions, finishing with 245 yards through the air. And UCF rolled, 48-14. Gabriel, the very next week against Stanford: 22-of-30 for 347 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions in a 45-27 win.
• In the 2018 American title game the week after Milton went down, Mack was much better too: 19-of-27 for 348 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions to run UCF’s undefeated streak to 25 games.

So sure, whenever one of Heupel’s teams runs it as much as we saw Thursday night, there’s usually uncertainty at quarterback involved. But two very important pieces of good news: UCF still won all of those games with such a high run rate, including some incredibly meaningful victories. And, with Mack and Gabriel, there was a bunch of statistical progress from one week to the next, again in incredibly meaningful games UCF also won.

It’s fair to call UT’s quarterback situation uncertain after Milton’s first performance, and easy to see why Heupel kept running it so often. But it’s also encouraging to see how UCF still found ways to win on the ground…and how much more certain the quarterback position looked soon after.

The Vols opened +1.5 against Pittsburgh, making Saturday’s contest an excellent initial reading for the program Josh Heupel is seeking to build. Many of us have talked about how it feels like Lane Kiffin’s Week 2 test against UCLA a dozen years ago – more on that in a moment – but Vegas reveals the truth we’ve all come to know in the years since. Kiffin’s Vols were -10.5 at kickoff (closing lines via covers.com) against the Bruins in 2009. Tennessee was much closer to the championships we’re trying to chase back then.

“Home underdog vs mid-tier ACC team” doesn’t warm the heart. But if honesty continues to be the best policy, it’s an excellent acknowledgement of where Heupel and company will begin. And even though we’ve been playing this rebuilding game for a while now, it’s the quickest reading any of Tennessee’s year one coaches had available to them.

2018 – Jeremy Pruitt

The Vols were +10 against #17 West Virginia in Charlotte out the gate, fell behind 10-0 in two possessions, but found life with a 17-play touchdown drive to open the second quarter. The Vols trailed just 13-7 at the break, but were quickly buried by Will Grier’s three straight touchdown passes to open the third quarter, ultimately falling 40-14.

That felt like an opportunity given our proximity to winning big games two years earlier. But it’s easy to forget the real opportunity, at least according to Vegas, came three weeks later: the Vols were just +3.5 when Florida came to Knoxville in Dan Mullen’s first year. A spectacular dose of weirdness ensued, with the Vols neither punting or scoring a touchdown on their first ten possessions.

(Seriously, this gets lost in the storm of Pruitt LOL or whatever, but Tennessee’s outright aggression in this game – the anti-Butch LOL – earned them an incredible opening sequence of fumble, INT, turnover on downs, FG, safety, fumble, fumble, fumble, FG, INT. That’s the kind of art we’ve been making around here.)

So the first real reading on Pruitt was unfortunate but also weird: “Take it again, that can’t be right,” etc. This was easily overridden, at the time, by the upset of #21 Auburn three weeks later.

2013 – Butch Jones

Speaking of weird and unfortunate, Jones’ second game came against Western Kentucky in 2013, with Bobby Petrino on the sideline and Jeff Brohm calling plays. This group did ultimately finish 8-4, making the -14 line at kickoff feel about right in hindsight. But they turned it over five times in six plays, handing Tennessee an easy 52-20 victory.

The Vols were then massive underdogs (rightfully so) at Oregon, with double-digit lines to follow at Florida and vs Georgia. The near miss in the latter made Butch Jones’ first one-possession line come the following week, +7 against #11 South Carolina, when Marquez North worked his magic and the Vols got their first ranked win since 2009. This was an incredible win given Tennessee’s recent past, the value of the present moment, and the future Jones was already building in recruiting. But there’s a reason these initial readings are just the first of many: in both a team’s ranking at the time and their place in the final AP poll, the Vols never beat a better team than this one under Butch Jones.

2010 – Derek Dooley

Super-weird fact about Dooley’s Year Zero: the Vols didn’t face a one-possession line until mid-November against Ole Miss. And that one, with the Vols -2.5 and winning 52-14, is the biggest positive surprise via Vegas for any Tennessee team in the post-Fulmer era.

The Vols were +10.5 against #7 Oregon in Knoxville in week two, where they built a 13-3 lead around a rain delay. Oregon led 20-13 midway through the third quarter but the Vols were driving. But a 76-yard pick six opened the proverbial floodgates, and the Vols gave up another three scores in the final 1.5 quarters. This was the beginning of Dooley’s, “We don’t handle adversity well,” mantra, which of course, never really changed under his watch.

2009 – Lane Kiffin

Back to UCLA: it’s a good idea for a first-year coach not to lose as a double-digit favorite. But the Bruins handed Tennessee two of their most infuriating losses of my lifetime in consecutive years, this one coming via a trio of Jonathan Crompton interceptions and a goal line stop on Montario Hardesty.

The Vols were -2.5 against Auburn in Gene Chizik’s first year in early October, but fell 26-22. So the first two readings left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. But if you beat Georgia 45-19 the very next week (Vols +1), it’s all good.

So with Kiffin, Dooley, Butch, and Pruitt, our first meaningful opinions were formed not in toss-ups, but in games with lines of 10-14 points. Kiffin took a brutal loss in the moment, Dooley gave us hope for 2.5 quarters, Butch benefitted from a thousand turnovers, and Pruitt’s young defense ate a bad matchup. A common theme, of course: no one’s season or our take on these guys after one year was defined by that initial reading. We felt much better about Kiffin at the end of the season (pre-middle-of-the-night), about the same on Dooley and Butch, and were just generally confused by Pruitt, who beat two ranked teams then lost to Missouri and Vanderbilt by 25+ points to finish the year.

So the first reading is never the last reading. But it will establish the baseline, at least until the Vols get a chance to do something more memorable in Gainesville. And this first reading is much, much closer to a pick ’em than anything we’re used to seeing in a coach’s first year.

In fact, the nature of a rebuild suggests you probably won’t see much of that in the SEC, and the length of Tennessee’s project suggests Heupel probably won’t have the chance to lose a game as a 10+ point favorite. The games the Vols will be favored in look likely to either be very close or more like Bowling Green. But we might get pick ’em territory against Missouri, Kentucky, etc. How that’s gone for other Year 1 coaches at Tennessee:

Year One UT Coaches with lines of 0-3 points:

• Kiffin 3-3: -2.5 Auburn (L 26-22), +1 Georgia (W 45-19), -6 South Carolina (W 31-13), +6 Ole Miss (L 42-17), -3 Kentucky (W 30-24 OT), +4 Virginia Tech (L 37-14)
• Dooley 3-1: -2.5 Ole Miss (W 52-14), -7.5 Vandy (W 24-10), -2.5 Kentucky (W 24-14), -1 North Carolina (L nonsense)
• Butch 2-2: +7 South Carolina (W 23-21), +7.5 Auburn (L 55-23), -2.5 Vandy (L 14-10), -3.5 Kentucky (W 27-14)
• Pruitt 1-3: +3.5 Florida (L 47-21), +5 Kentucky (W 24-7), +5.5 Missouri (L 50-17), +3.5 Vandy (L 38-13)

The first word is never the last word. But it’ll be the one we start with on Saturday, in the earliest toss-up game any of these year one coaches have faced. What will we be talking about by Saturday afternoon?

The question this week: will our community expected win total for the Vols, at 6.74 going into Bowling Green, go down even in 32-point victory? Will it stay north of 6.5 wins, or will 6-6 become our most likely outcome?

Expected win total is about us, but it’s also about who we play. Pitt had the kind of game we would’ve loved against the kind of opponent we both saw: the Panthers throttled UMass 51-7, but again, it’s UMass. We’ll learn all we need to know about the Vols and Panthers on Saturday.

You know the drill: enter the percentage chance you give Tennessee to win each of its remaining 11 regular season games, hit submit, and you’ll get your expected win total this week.

My thoughts on the longer view from Saturday and how we’re feeling about each opponent based on what they did:

• About the same: Florida’s going to be tough to judge before our meeting in Week 4, as the Gators played themselves into a hair of a QB controversy in Week 1. Resolved or not this week at South Florida, it then goes into the fire of Alabama, whose version of “about the same” means asking yourself if 5% is too great a win probability for Tennessee in that game. South Carolina handled its FCS opponent. Ole Miss plays tonight against Louisville.
• The same, but different: Georgia beat Clemson 10-3 with a defensive touchdown. Mostly I’m upset that I stayed up to watch it.
• A little better: Missouri struggled to put Central Michigan away because they went 1-for-11 on third down, the same number the Vols put up in struggling to put away South Carolina last season.
• A little worse: Kentucky is probably the biggest mover of the week, depending on your thoughts on Georgia’s offense and defense. Will Levis threw a pick out the gate, then went for 367 yards and four touchdowns through the air.
• A lot better: Vanderbilt. Randy Sanders’ last game as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator was a loss to Jay Cutler’s Vanderbilt squad with Rick Clausen playing quarterback in 2005. The best revenge is living well for the next 15 years, then getting spectacularly even via East Tennessee State University.

So much of what happened last night was new. The question, which was never going to be answered last night, is how much of it will be better.

Josh Heupel’s offense snapped the ball 88 times. The last time we saw Tennessee play against Texas A&M last December, they snapped it 37 times.

The Vols averaged 66 plays per game in 2020. Jeremy Pruitt’s first team averaged 59.7, slowest in college football. You can watch all the film of UCF you want, but when it’s your team in your house, it’s just different. There is no PA announcer when the Vols are on offense, which I’m not sure is a choice or just a fact of playing that fast. As I’m sure Danny White already knows, I can’t text a buddy from my seats because the service is so bad inside Neyland. So sitting there last night, it was really weird to watch this thing come downfield at breakneck speed, with all the things so many of us have become accustomed to in watching a game completely unavailable between time and technology. There’s little opportunity to ponder the last play and consider the stakes of the next one. In-person, there’s even less chance to see where Tennessee’s rushing numbers are on the 12th play of the drive. It’s just constantly coming at you.

So too are the first impressions, where we’re also trying to filter out the noise this morning. Joe Milton launches the football. In warmups, he stood in the back of the end zone while the other quarterbacks stood at the goal line, and still routinely fired it into enemy territory across the 50 with what sure seemed like ease. But Tennessee ended the night with 61 rushing attempts and only 27 dropbacks, giving Bowling Green death by ground game. Milton was 10-of-22 for 100 yards before finally connecting on one of those deep balls to Cedric Tillman. He also had a ludicrous amount of time to throw on several snaps; nevermind Pittsburgh, I’m not sure Tennessee Tech will be that generous.

Meanwhile Tennessee’s defense allowed just 3.59 yards per play, the best performance against an FBS foe since the 2018 Kentucky game. Bowling Green had 32 rushing yards; this part is still new in the football world in general, considering Florida ran for only 19 yards last year in Knoxville but still won with ease. Still, a dominant, welcome performance by Tennessee’s defense.

And Tennessee’s 326 rushing yards were fun all around, with Jabari Small and Tiyon Evans getting 116 apiece, plus Joe Milton’s 44. The Vols had some runs you felt like got stuffed too easily against Bowling Green, though some of that was an injury to Cooper Mays. But they also popped 12 runs of 10+ yards.

It all reminds me a bit of a long car ride before we had all this new technology. When I was a kid, and you got tired of whatever cassette tapes you brought, you’d push a button or turn a knob on your radio dial and try to find something good in an unfamiliar place. Lots of static, some different options, just trying to lock in on a good signal. And it took a precise touch to get the best quality in the midst of all that noise.

Statistically, this game feels a lot like the UTEP contest from Jeremy Pruitt’s first year: the Vols won by less than you thought they should (24-0 in that case), but were thoroughly dominant both on the ground and defensively. Did that kind of performance mean much of anything for the rest of 2018? Not really, because UTEP went 1-11 that fall.

Will this one mean much of anything? Feels like the biggest question after one night is, “How much of that was Bowling Green?” And, of course, you don’t have to wait long for the answer. Pitt will get their own version against UMass on Saturday, and then the Vols and Panthers will get each other.

The Vols will still play fast. Joe Milton will still have that arm. Not sure those new lights will matter much at noon, but there will still be plenty of newness in the atmosphere.

But what kind of atmosphere will the Vols create for themselves next Saturday?

It’s. Game. Day.

Thanks to everyone who used the Gameday on Rocky Top Expected Win Total Machine to make their picks for the season. Heading into tonight, here’s how Tennessee fans are feeling on the year:

Total Expected Wins: 6.74

Game-by-game probabilities:

Bowling Green	95.1%
Pittsburgh	58.4%
Tennessee Tech	97.5%
at Florida	23.9%
at Missouri	45.8%
South Carolina	63.8%
Ole Miss	44.2%
at Alabama	5.7%
at Kentucky	49.8%
Georgia	15.6%
South Alabama	91.6%
Vanderbilt	82.1%

Previous Week 1 Expected Win Totals

• 2020: 5.7 (10 game schedule)
• 2019: 7.2
• 2018: 6.65
• 2017: 7.94

So in the four years we’ve done this exercise, we’ve got a pair of seasons featuring about half as many wins as we originally thought, a healthy miss just by wins and losses in 2018, and one year we got right in August (but wrong in September and October). But thanks in part to Tennessee’s schedule, the 2021 Vols project to have more wins than two of the last three seasons in Week 1, despite all the continued craziness.

The real fun, of course, is projected wins in those toss-up games. We project Tennessee to win 1.982 games out of Pittsburgh, Missouri, Ole Miss, and Kentucky. Throw South Carolina in that mix, and we project 2.62 wins in the five game run closest to the pin. From preseason, this feels like the narrative: you’ve got three non-conference wins plus Vanderbilt on the schedule, and South Carolina might end up in the same category. So get one of Pitt, Mizzou, Ole Miss, and Kentucky, and you’re bowl eligible. Get two, and you’re 7-5. This is, in part, the value of this exercise with the win total machine: if just assigning a win or a loss to each game, fans would lean, even if ever so slightly, toward an L against Missouri, Ole Miss, and Kentucky. But in reality, the expected win totals show fans easily believe Tennessee will get at least one win in there.

You never know with these things: in Week 1 last year we thought having Arkansas on the schedule would be a godsend, and it turned out not so much. After losing to Georgia State, BYU, and Florida our 2019 win total machine ran in the 2’s for a minute. Part of the fun is tracking progress.

But as every season indeed tells a story, there is perhaps a little more room to be pleasantly surprised by this one. It’s possible, starting today.

We’ll run this back every Monday morning, enough time to avoid immediate post-game overreactions, and track the needle throughout the season. Thanks, as always, for being along for the ride.

Enjoy the year. Enjoy the day. Go Vols.

Pandemic, month whatever, and the thing I’ve found most helpful during these crazy days still comes from March of 2020:

In dealing with genuinely terrifying moments, I don't want to be an optimist. And I don't want to be a pessimist.

It's not true that "Everything is possible."
It's not true that "Nothing is possible."

I say a little prayer: God, show me what is possible today.

— Kate Bowler (@KatecBowler) March 18, 2020

If you want idiot optimism, of course, we have that too.

We also spent a lot of time before, during, and immediately following the transition from Pruitt and Fulmer to Josh and Danny talking about exile, and patience. That’s probably still a good idea. It just goes on vacation in Week 1.

Thoughts and prayers for Nebraska, but for the rest of us, this is one of the best weeks of the year. Everyone is undefeated. For Tennessee, it hasn’t been about staying that way in quite some time. But for all of us – Vols included – it is about what’s possible.

To be sure, one thing that’s possible is the Vols struggle right away: losing to Pittsburgh, blown out by Florida, losing at Missouri. If that happens, we’ll fall back on patience. But the self-preservation instincts we’ve been forced to acquire watching our team the last four years will come more naturally and more quickly, and there will be less immediate engagement. I’ve seen it happen in basketball: “Eh, we’re not there yet, I’ll check back again next year.” That’s possible.

But there are a few versions of the possible that we’d find a little more intriguing.

It’s possible Joe Milton is a significant upgrade at quarterback. It needs to be probable that Milton, or Hendon Hooker, or Harrison Bailey, is an upgrade of any kind at the position over what the Vols have done the last four seasons. If not, it’ll be the last five years. But Milton’s physical tools and the high end of his small sample size – the first three performances against Minnesota, Michigan State, and Indiana last year, knowing he got hurt somewhere along the way – are an intriguing set of ingredients to throw in the bowl with Josh Heupel. It doesn’t have to be an All-SEC performance. But it’s possible we see something much closer to it.

It’s possible junior college transfers Tiyon Evans and Byron Young make immediate impacts. Evans was the #1 juco running back via 247 last year, Young the #1 weakside defensive end. These are Jeremy Pruitt pickups in the middle of last season’s free fall. And it appears both will have immediate opportunities to contribute.

It’s possible the transfer portal could speed up some of what comes with rebuilding. It’s unlikely the players the Vols brought in will match the statistical contributions of the guys they lost. But not only do you now have the opportunity to replace those guys – especially important if NCAA violations would’ve allowed exits more freely than entries – but you also might avoid some of what tends to happen in Year 1. When teams struggle around the middle of their season, upperclassmen who weren’t recruited by the new guy and can see either the NFL or the end of their career from here can sometimes check out. You’d certainly still like to have some of the talent the Vols lost, but perhaps the players who remain will stay invested longer, regardless of how the season goes.

It’s possible the offensive line won’t suffer additional significant injuries. K’Rojhn Calbert already rules this one out for the entire team, leaving the Vols perilously thin up front. But by all reports, the coaching staff feels good about their starting five. Can that starting five stay healthy? Tennessee has depth issues at a number of positions, but nowhere would a rash of injuries be more problematic than up front.

It’s possible the window of opportunity to enjoy this team is wider than usual. To be sure, this felt true last year too in the middle of a pandemic, when we were grateful to be playing at all. But expectations are lower, there’s the grace that comes with a first-year coach, and the fatigue of being a fan the last 13 years and life itself in these last 18 months would make us more grateful than ever to be surprised. Bowl eligibility is possible. So too is 7-5, which if it’s followed by a bowl victory, would leave Josh Heupel with the best year one of anyone who’s tried it during this rebuild. That’s the best news of all, felt around the nation this week, hoped for in Knoxville for a long time: progress is possible.

Go Vols.