Category Archives: Football

It’s easy, and perhaps now natural, to take a Tennessee performance like this against a group-of-five school and lament what it wasn’t. A hallmark of Tennessee’s post-2007 swoon is some combination of inability and unwillingness to dominate mid-majors. Starting with a four-point win over Northern Illinois and a loss to Wyoming in 2008, every single season has included a “meh” moment. Some calls are closer than others: UAB in 2010, Troy in 2012, South Alabama in 2013, UMass in 2017, and of course Georgia State in September. But these years also include plenty of scores like 24-0 over North Texas, 28-19 over Ohio, and 14-3 over Charlotte last year.

UAB was 6-1 and 16-3 over its last 19, but it was clear from the outset the 2019 Blazers were painfully short on competition. Tennessee’s defense dominated, included a record-tying performance from Bryce Thompson. Tennessee’s offense had their moments, but didn’t capitalize the way you wanted with such great field position. The red zone performance was more of the unfortunate same: five trips but only three touchdowns, leaving the Vols with only 14 touchdowns on 32 trips this season, 126th nationally in red zone touchdown percentage. (Stats via SportSource Analytics)

That remains Tennessee’s greatest statistical weakness, and an important one in these last three games. The decision to play Jarrett Guarantano most of the night, even with a surgically-repaired non-throwing hand, resurfaced some of our anxiety at quarterback after a brief spark from Brian Maurer and, truly, one of the best passing performances of the decade from Guarantano and J.T. Shrout just last week. Last night’s performance makes last week look even better, but mixes in old fears with new hopes.

But viewed through the lens of the entire season, Tennessee is still moving hard and fast in the right direction. In that long list of mid-major disappointments, you get lines like -22.5 in a 14-3 win over Charlotte, -28 in a 17-13 win over UMass, -27 in a 28-19 win over Ohio, etc.

Last night, due both to Tennessee’s start and UAB’s consistency, the Vols were only -13.5, and won by 23. The Vols have now covered the spread four weeks in a row for the first time since 2010, and just the 10th time in the last 35 years (closing lines via covers.com). Tennessee made it five weeks in a row at the end of the 2010 regular season thanks to Tyler Bray, who helped the Vols cover in defeat at South Carolina, then went 4-0 straight up and against Vegas in November. Before that, the last time Tennessee covered five straight weeks: the first five games of 1998.

Vegas, like the rest of us, hasn’t had a good feel for Tennessee all year. The Vols were overvalued by 62.5 points in their first four FBS games, and have now been undervalued by 61 points in the last four games. It’s a tangible sign of an actual turnaround. But the Vols have to get this thing to six wins to still call it that in the off-season.

Tennessee was 4-5 headed into this stretch last season, but got what felt like a revelation in the 24-7 win over #12 Kentucky. And then it turned out the prophets were false.

This time, there will be no revelations unless Missouri creates one first: Kentucky is 4-4, Missouri 5-3 and set to face Georgia and Florida back-to-back, and Vanderbilt is 2-6. The journey ventured through the upside-down, but the end result we wanted in preseason – rise above the SEC East’s second tier, close the gap on your biggest rivals – is here for the taking. The turnaround narrative – and its chance to last us all off-season, and spend eight months thinking about what will be instead of what could’ve been – is alive. Whether the Vols cover or not, play Guarantano or not, or any number of the uncertainties that have defined this season, the Vols need two wins in three games. Three in three, and I still believe the Vols can be in line for a much nicer bowl opportunity than we thought even in preseason.

Hope lives, even if we saw some glimpses of what tried to take it away against UAB. The Vols still played better than expected all things considered, and by Vegas’ standards have done so more consistently now than in nine years. The margins remain small and the questions many, but for the last month Tennessee has found the right answer again and again. Hope lives. It should probably hang on tight.

Go Vols.

If J.T. Shrout attempts four more passes – seems likely at this point – it will be the third time in the post-Fulmer era the Vols had three quarterbacks attempt at least 25 passes. It happened at the end of the disastrous 2017 season via Will McBride (17-of-40 in two appearances). And it happened in the middle of 2011 with Tyler Bray’s broken thumb, and Derek Dooley’s decision to pull Justin Worley’s redshirt. Worley did get a win against MTSU. But in terms of this kind of success against meaningful competition, you have to go back to 2004 with Brent Schaeffer, Erik Ainge, and Rick Clausen.

The 2019 Vols aren’t going to win the SEC East (but we can still Lloyd Christmas it another week if Georgia wins tomorrow!) but can still engineer an incredible turnaround. One way to measure that: what the Vols are currently doing against Vegas. After losing as a 24.5-point favorite to Georgia State and a three-point favorite to BYU, the Vols were +12.5 at Florida and lost by 31. That’s a 57-point swing in the first three FBS games (closing lines via covers.com), plus another five in losing to Georgia by 29 at +24.

Those five points are as close as Vegas has come on any Tennessee game this year. Because since then, the Vols beat Mississippi State as an underdog by 10, covered easily against Alabama, and beat South Carolina as an underdog by 20.

Two wins as an underdog of at least +4 isn’t new: the Vols did that last year against Auburn and Kentucky. But Vegas has now undervalued the Vols by a combined 51.5 points in the last three weeks.

It’s just the fifth time this decade the Vols have covered the spread three weeks in a row. Tennessee did it twice in 2015, and Josh Dobbs did it himself in 2014 (Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky). For the (hopefully) best comparison here, you have to go all the way back to Tyler Bray’s emergence: his appearance at South Carolina in 2010 and subsequent 4-0 run to end the regular season is the last time the Vols covered the spread at least four weeks in a row, getting to five in that run. Tennessee’s 52-14 win over Ole Miss in that stretch when the Vols were just -2.5 is the most I’ve seen UT undervalued this decade.

As the Vols (currently -12) look to make it four in a row this week, the opponent lends itself to additional mystery:

Joel’s statsy preview machine agrees with chaos this week. If you’re looking for regression to the mean, this probably isn’t the week for that since no one really knows what the mean is with UAB. It’s one more element of unpredictability in an already-massively-unpredictable season that might feature three quarterbacks and a wide receiver taking snaps at quarterback.

In such a time as this, the Vols should again look to their defense and run game to carry them; we learned last week that can look much more exciting than you think. Will we get the game we thought we’d see against Georgia State? Will UAB – winners of 16 of their last 19 games! – parlay that spirit into another competitive game? Will the Vols commit to a rotation between quarterbacks (whether it’s all three or only two with Guarantano’s wrist), or start one and ride him as long as he’s hot? Will that kind of plan – one bad throw away from the bench – affect the young quarterbacks?

Bowl expectations are riding high – 5.72 is the updated community average in our expected win total machine – but the most reasonable expectation truly remains the unexpected. Hopefully that manifests itself as another great performance from multiple quarterbacks and another Saturday to celebrate.

Beware: Weirdness afoot.

Tennessee opened as a 10.5-point favorite over the UAB Blazers this week, and since then it’s bounced around between 9.5 and 12.5. Currently, it’s Vols -12. So . . . will the Vols cover against UAB?

The SPM’s performance so far in 2019

After three straight weeks of being over 55% (and notching nearly 64% last week), the SPM fell victim to the turf monster last week and went 25-30 (45.45%) overall. Over our confidence threshold, it went 9-11 (45%), and in our pre-defined favorites range, it went 6-5 (54.55%). This week, we tracked both Vegas and non-Vegas lines, and essentially, there was only a one-game difference between those two sets of data.

For the season, the SPM now sits at 223-217 (50.68%) overall, 99-80 (55.31%) over the confidence threshold, and 55-32 (63.22%) in our favorites range.

I’m officially now regretting my early-season decision to include the overall SPM stuff with the weekly Tennessee statsy preview because the SPM is TERRIBLE at Vols games. It again got the Tennessee game wrong last week, the third week in a row it’s whiffed on the Vols. And it’s going to make itself look downright stupid this week. I consoling myself with constant reminders that the Vols have everybody else confused, too, including Vegas.

So what does the SPM have to say about the Tennessee-UAB game this week? Ahem . . .

Vols-Blazers

Okay, first, the SPM’s opinion on the Vols-Blazers game this weekend should be mostly ignored. The only reason I’m even posting this is (1) in the interest of full disclosure and to avoid allegations of cherry-picking, and (2) because of that word “mostly.”

Full disclosure

Without going through the full analysis, I’m just going to tell you that the SPM has UAB winning this game by 16.2 points. This actually provides an excellent illustration of why you can’t just assume that the machine gets more reliable the more it diverges from the Vegas line. The truth is that there is a sweet spot. The results generally get more reliable the more they diverge from the Vegas line, but only up to a point. If they diverge too much, it’s more an indication that it is not reliable because something is very, very wrong.

So what’s wrong? This is a whole different neighborhood, man.

Those of you who’ve been reading for some time know that the SPM is a comps system. While other systems rank teams based on how good they are and then make predictions based on those relative rankings, the SPM uses comparables to make predictions, and the comps are just no good this week. To UAB, the Vols defense looks most like Rice and Old Dominion and the offense looks like Western Kentucky and UTSA. To drive the point home a bit more, from Tennessee’s perspective, UAB’s defense looks like Florida and Alabama and its offense looks like South Carolina and Florida.

As odd as that looks, there’s good reason for it. UAB’s stats put them right alongside those teams in the national rankings. The problem is that those stats have been compiled against nothing but terrible competition. As I said in that earlier post, Tennessee strength of schedule is currently ranked 12th, and UAB’s is ranked 130th. And as @Alyas Grey said in this terrific comment, wins and losses aren’t the only issues. You can’t compare Manhattan commercial real estate to a duplex in Podunk, Alabama. Well, you can, but you’ll end up with UAB winning by 16 points.

Configuring the SPM to account for that will have to be an offseason project. For now, we’ll just have to mostly ignore it on those rare occasions when it spits out something funny.

That word “mostly”

But I say “mostly ignore” because all of that might also be hinting at something we’re all missing. There are two sides to this problem, and our tendency is to intensely scrutinize only one side of that coin while ignoring the other.

If you don’t know how good a team is because they haven’t played anybody, you can’t just conclude that they are no good. If you don’t know how good they are, you don’t know how good they are. They could be worse than they look, but they could also be better than you’re giving them credit for.

The Blazers’ 6-1 record so far in 2019 is not unexpected. After finishing our magazine this spring, I wondered whether the Vols’ toughest non-conference opponent would be BYU or UAB. So, while we’re dismissing their schedule, we’d do well to give some weight to their resume.

SPM Final Estimates

For the record (and in case you skipped everything else, I’m putting it here: This is likely to be really wrong):

SPM Final estimated score: UAB 30, Tennessee 13.8

SPM Final estimated spread: UAB -16.2

SPM Confidence level (difference from the opening spread): 26.7

One more time with feeling: That 26.7 “confidence” level is so high that it signals serious wonkiness, that you should not be confident in it. Yes, I should rename it something other than “confidence level.”

Eyeball adjustments

What do we do about all of this? The Blazers haven’t ventured out of Podunk so far this year, but they did head to the big city once last year when they played Texas A&M at College Station. Despite finishing the 2018 season 11-3, they lost to the Aggies 41-20. The SPM says that if those two teams played today, the score would be Blazers 25.1, Aggies 24.8. Occam says that’s wrong by three touchdowns.

If the SPM is similarly wrong about the Vols-Blazers, that would make it Vols by 5. Combine that with the fact that the SPM has been wrong on the Vols for three weeks in a row now, presumably due to the fact that it doesn’t recognize that they’re improving every week, and I’d bump that up another touchdown. Let’s say Vols by 12, maybe.

So, my eyeball-adjusted prediction is Tennessee 28, UAB 17. I think the Vols cover the opening spread of Tennessee -10.5, but I don’t think they cover the current spread of Tennessee -12.

Other predictions from other systems

With the current spread at Tennessee -12 and an over/under of 48, that translates to something like Tennessee 30, UAB 18.

ESPN’s FPI gives the Vols an 88.3% chance of winning.

Bill Connelly’s SP+ likes the Vols 27-18, and gives them a 70% chance of winning. That’s picking the Vols not to cover.

SP+ broke even last week. According to Bill’s Twitter timeline, SP+ went 27-27-1 (50%). It’s still at an impressive 55% for the season.

As I said earlier, our SPM is now 223-217 (50.68%) on the season and 55-32 (63.22%) in our favored range.

Bottom line

The SPM does not like the Vols to cover this week but lacks credibility on the Vols generally right now and in this game in particular. Using my own eyes, I like the Vols by 11, which means I think they’ll cover the opening spread of -10.5 but not the current spread of -12.

What do y’all think?

The Tennessee Volunteers kick off against the UAB Blazers at 7:00 p.m. this Saturday on ESPNU, but what about all of the other games? Here’s when and where to find those games, along with some suggestions on how and why to watch them.

First up is the list curated just for Vols fans. The full schedule follows that.

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Friday, November 1, 2019

Gameday, November 2, 2019

At noon, there are a couple of Top 25 teams in action, but really they’re just appetizers for the main event at 3:30 when No. 8 Georgia and No. 6 Florida meet up to decide who’s going to win the SEC East. There are other games on in the afternoon slot, too, but hey, if you want to watch Notre Dame and Virginia Tech, feel free, but I’m not going to recommend it.

The Vols kick off against UAB at 7:00 on ESPNU, and if you are so inclined, you can DVR Vandy-South Carolina to get a better bead on the upcoming game against the Commodores.

Enjoy!

Full searchable college football TV schedule

ESPN’s FPI projects the Vols to finish with 5.5 regular season wins. At the moment, bowl eligibility is – barely but fairly! – the most likely outcome. You can do your own math with our expected win total machine, but most of us are coming in on the right side of six wins. And thanks to Missouri’s struggles against Kentucky and Vanderbilt, seven wins – the very 7-5 finish many of us picked at the start of the season – suddenly feels like it’s on the table too.

FPI will cool those jets, giving Tennessee just an 11.2% chance of winning out. This season should’ve taught us not to get ahead of ourselves when it comes to the Vols, and no one should be taking anyone for granted. UAB opened as a 13-point underdog, and by Tuesday it’s already 10. Vegas has underestimated the Vols by a combined 54 points in the last three weeks. I’d love to make it four. But Tennessee needs to take things one Saturday at a time.

For the rest of us, however, let’s consider the following possibility:

• Alabama and LSU both make the College Football Playoff
• The Sugar Bowl is required to take the next highest-ranked SEC team, probably the Florida/Georgia winner
• The Florida/Georgia loser wins out, finishes 10-2, and is ranked high enough in the CFP poll to earn an at-large bid to the New Year’s Six
• The Citrus Bowl is required to take the next highest-ranked SEC team, probably Auburn

That scenario plays out in Banner Society’s bowl projections; Jason Kirk has been one of the very best (by being one of the most realistic) in those projections for a long time. He doesn’t have Tennessee bowl eligible, so let’s hope that part is unrealistic. But if all of the above plays out, the SEC’s Group of Six bowls would be choosing between a Texas A&M team who finishes at Georgia and at LSU, Kentucky (FPI projects at 7-5), Missouri if they’re eligible, and – if they can get to six wins – Mississippi State, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

It’s a nice, neat group of six if everyone is eligible. But FPI projects South Carolina to come up short, and Missouri is still ineligible at the moment. It could be that those six bowls are choosing between A&M, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Tennessee. A&M played in the Gator Bowl last year, Mississippi State in the Outback.

If the Vols are 7-5 on a five -game winning streak? It ain’t gonna be the Liberty Bowl, friends.

Keep taking care of business, and there’s a real chance the Vols could spend January in Florida.