Gameday on Rocky Top

In the weeks leading up to the season the last two years, we’ve put Tennessee’s outlook into tiers based on SP+ projections. Leading up to 2020, for instance, the most common comparisons were Tennessee teams you felt like had a realistic chance to have a shot every game. For this year, there was the hope of progress, and the idea that the Vols might not get blown out so often.

Tennessee’s final margin last night was 24 points, twice as many as what we saw in this match-up last year. But no one would argue which game was more competitive: last year Florida built a three-possession lead five plays and 75 yards into the third quarter, and the Vols didn’t score again until there were only five minutes left in the game, then down 31-7. So yes, the outcome was two possessions, but the experience was mostly non-competitive.

Last night, not only did the Vols build a 14-10 lead in the second quarter (and follow it up with a stop). But Tennessee had 4th-and-5 at the Florida 30 with six minutes to play in the third quarter, down 24-14. The drop by Jimmy Calloway was indeed crushing, turning what could’ve been a 24-21 game into a change in possession.

Tennessee also got Florida in 1st-and-20 a minute later, but couldn’t hold as the Gators converted 3rd-and-3, then 3rd-and-1 for a touchdown. The game went to three possessions with two minutes to play in the third quarter; Florida tacked on one more in the fourth.

But by this metric, Tennessee was in the game – ahead, tied, or behind by 1-2 possessions – for 43 of the game’s 60 minutes, or 72% of the outcome. And in this manner, the Vols showed immediate improvement.

In the last three years against the Gators:

• 2018: A safety and a 65-yard touchdown pass on the very next snap turned a 14-3 game into a 23-3 hole with 11 minutes to play in the second quarter. The Vols were in this game for 19 minutes.
• 2019: Florida scored on 4th-and-goal at the 1 on the final play of the second quarter for a 17-0 lead. Brian Maurer got the Vols downfield for three to open the third, but Florida answered with 75 yards in six plays to push it back to three possessions, and the Vols didn’t score again. Tennessee was technically in this game for 32 minutes, but failed to score a touchdown in 60.
• 2020: The Florida score to open the third quarter means the Vols were likewise in this game for 32 minutes.

Comparisons to Georgia and Alabama are increasingly unfair, but in the last administration, consider how quickly they built three-possession leads:

• 2018 Georgia: Dawgs up 17-0 on the last drive of the second quarter. Tennessee scored twice to get it back within 24-12 with 11 minutes to play, but Georgia ground us to death with a 13-play drive requiring nothing more than 3rd-and-4 to make it three scores again. Vols were in this game for 38 minutes.
• 2018 Alabama: Tua Tagovailoa hit Jaylen Waddle for 77 yards on the first play of Alabama’s third drive for the Tide’s third touchdown. Tennessee was in this game for all of seven minutes.
• 2019 Georgia: The one most similar to last night: Brian Maurer hit a big play and made a great throw to give the Vols a 14-10 lead early in the second quarter. Tennessee didn’t score again, but did have 1st-and-10 at midfield down 29-14 before throwing an interception, then stopped Georgia on fourth down but went three-and-out. The Dawgs made it three possessions with 8:02 to play in the fourth, putting Tennessee in this one for 52 minutes.
• 2019 Alabama: You know this one. Down 21-10 at the half, the Vols cut it to 21-13 in the third quarter. Bama responded with six, then the teams traded three-and-outs. The Vols had 4th-and-goal at the 1 with 7:21 to play when Jarrett Guarantano fumbled and Alabama ran it back for a touchdown. So the Vols were in this one for 52 minutes too.
• 2020 Georgia: Vols led 21-17 at halftime, then all Georgia. The Dawgs made it 16 points with 10:30 to go in the fourth, then scoop-and-scored to make it three possessions thirty seconds later. The Vols were in it for 50 minutes, but obviously it only felt like 30.
• 2020 Alabama: A second quarter score made it 21-3, but the Vols did answer with six. Bama was right back to work in five plays and 75 yards. The Vols were in this one for 24 minutes.

By this metric, Josh Heupel’s debut in a rivalry game was Tennessee’s best performance against the Gators in four years. And I’d put it on the list with the Brian Maurer Georgia game, the 2019 Alabama game until JG’s fumble, and the first half in Athens last year as one of Tennessee’s better performances in any rivalry game of the last three years.

This is, of course, no ultimate prize. But the Vols looked more coherent, longer, with fewer familiar faces. The game plan made sense on both sides of the ball. And so too, for now, did the outcome.

Tennessee moves to its most important stretch now, and will do so with continued uncertainty about the health of its quarterbacks. The Vols are +3 at Missouri, a virtual toss-up on a neutral field. The success of 2021 will rise and fall quite a bit between now and the next time we see one of our biggest rivals.

But for the long-term success of the program…last night was a decent step in the right direction, especially considering how many coaches have tried to take that first step over the last dozen years. There’s a lot left to learn. But not only could it have been a lot worse, it has been before. And there were signs that, perhaps, it might get better.

Go Vols.

Our community expected win total creeps back over six this week. Using our GRT Expected Win Total Machine, we’ve got Tennessee’s projected regular season win total at 6.06 this week. That’s up from 5.94 last week, which followed 6.74 in preseason and 6.60 after Bowling Green.

Even if the Vols fall on Saturday, we may see next week’s total stay north of 5.5 wins. Tennessee’s path to bowl eligibility won’t be threatened tomorrow night; only the fast-forward button is at stake.

This week our community gives the Vols a 19.9% chance against the Gators, down from 22.7% last weekend before they almost got the Tide. That’s down a hair from the 23% chance SP+ gives the Vols, which is, incidentally, Tennessee’s winning percentage since this rivalry’s been played annually the last 31 years.

SP+ provided one of the best data points coming out of the Tennessee Tech game: the Vols now boast a Top 10 special teams unit, and a Top 25 defense (19.6 defensive SP+ rating, good for 21st nationally). Tennessee’s defense made a lengthy climb in this department two years ago, going from the Georgia State debacle to a 7-1 finish. Take out the loss to Alabama in that latter stretch, and no team scored more than 22 points in those seven Tennessee wins. The 2019 defense finished the year 19th in SP+, the program’s highest rating since the 2015 group finished 13th.

That group was led by seniors at every level, from Darrell Taylor to Daniel Bituli to Nigel Warrior. This Tennessee defense has been led largely by a cast of characters we don’t really know well. Through three games Theo Jackson leads the team with a ridiculous 8.33 tackles per game; if he kept that pace all year it would be the best season at Tennessee since A.J. Johnson in 2013. Jackson joins lots of other names in the secondary we’ve heard before, but never with such enthusiasm. There are intriguing possibilities, old and new, on the defensive line.

And even in the middle of the field – where the Vols struggled more than anywhere else last year in a season defined by struggle – there are signs of hope.

The Vols allowed opposing quarterbacks to complete 68.2% of their passes last season, 125th of 127 teams who played in 2020. It hasn’t been a total turnaround so far: the Vols are 74th in that stat after holding Tennessee Tech to 47.2%. But in the one live fire test we’ve seen, there were a couple of key differences.

Kenny Pickett went 24-of-36 (66.7%) against the Vols, joining four quarterbacks from last season who completed at least two-thirds of their passes against UT on at least 20 attempts. But you’ll note the improvement:

QB	Year	CMP	ATT	PCT	YDS	YPA
Kenny Pickett	2021	24	36	66.7%	285	7.9
Mac Jones	2020	25	31	80.6%	387	12.5
Felipe Franks	2020	18	24	75.0%	215	9
Kyle Trask	2020	35	49	71.4%	433	8.8
Kellen Mond	2020	26	32	81.3%	281	8.8

It may not have been great against Pickett, but it was a step in the right direction by comparison, in both completion percentage and yards per attempt. The Vols were very bad at this last year. I don’t know how many games just being…maybe below average at it now will win.

But if you’re looking for real progress: last year the Vols were 114th nationally in third down conversions allowed, giving up 47.62% on the year. So far this year, Tennessee is 12th nationally, giving up 27.45%.

Again, Bowling Green and Tennessee Tech, sure. But if you want the better comparison: Pitt went 8-of-20 (40%) on third down. That’s exactly the number the Vol defense hit against South Carolina and Missouri in the first two weeks of last season, both going 6-of-15. After that:

• Georgia: 8-of-16, 50%
• Kentucky: 6-of-12, 50%
• Alabama: 7-of-12, 58.3%
• Arkansas: 9-of-17, 52.9%
• Auburn: 9-of-15, 60%
• Florida: 6-of-13, 46.2%
• Vanderbilt: 3-of-18, 16.7%
• Texas A&M: 10-of-14, 71.4%

Yeah, that’s gross.

So yeah, things are better. “They’ll need to be against Florida,” sounds like the next sentence, and probably so. But the Gators went just 4-of-12 in this department against Alabama. Tennessee’s defense was masterful in getting out of bad situations against Pittsburgh, giving the offense every opportunity to win.

Can they do the same tomorrow night?

The mostly likely outcome here is we take what we learn from Saturday night, and see if it can translate into victory in a very important stretch of at Missouri and vs South Carolina.

But if you’re looking for magic – and not the kind that appears out of thin air, like the Vols suddenly connecting on a high percentage of deep balls – it may in fact come from the defense, and their significant improvement in getting off the field when it matters most.

Go Vols.

Two years ago this week, the Vols headed to Gainesville after losing to Georgia State and BYU. In the middle of that week, it looked like the line in Vegas might become the second-worst of the then 30 years Tennessee and Florida had met consecutively. It settled at +12.5 by kickoff; the Vols lost by 31.

We are trending, shall we say, in the wrong direction:

In now 32 years of playing this rivalry annually, the Vols have been favored seven times, and we’ve won seven times. Vegas doesn’t miss much. When they do, it can be comical: you’ll note the 30-point spread in the, “Urban Meyer might actually attempt murder on Lane Kiffin,” game. Or what was the second-highest line the Vols faced in this rivalry, until last year: 2001, when the Vols went to The Swamp and won anyway.

That +16.5 at kickoff remains the biggest upset in the last 35+ years for Tennessee, a stat we pulled when Jeremy Pruitt’s year one team did the deed at Auburn:

Based on the closing lines at https://t.co/ZGtqgJ50S9, Tennessee's biggest wins as an underdog since 1985:

1. 2001 at Florida (+16.5)
2. 1989 at UCLA (+15.5)
3. 2018 at Auburn (+14.5)
4. 2004 at Georgia (+13)
5. 2003 at Miami (+12.5)

— Will Shelton (@wshelton2) October 14, 2018

2001 Florida has always been a stupid line all around: we don’t think of that win as the program’s biggest upset, because the Vols were good enough to be in the national championship conversation themselves. The rest of that list looks more like it, with Pruitt’s inclusion proof that it is always possible…and it may not necessarily mean everything.

What we do know is the Vols broke that +16.5 number last year at +18.5, and are headed that way as I write this on Wednesday afternoon this season, currently +19.5. If it stays there, the Vols will face their toughest odds against Florida at any point other than a throwaway line from 2009, and victory would require the program’s biggest upset in Vegas of the last 35 years.

We’re spending less energy worried about Bama these days, which is good. But Florida – vanquished five years ago, should’ve been vanquished four years in a row then, and just 3.5 points away three short (long?) years ago – remains a relevant conversation. “Always within reach, seldom grasped,” is how this usually goes.

But now, even the reach is getting longer. And so perhaps it’s a good moment to frame a couple of conversations.

For Tennessee’s present, six wins will not be lost on Saturday night. On that front, the Gators represent only opportunity. Lose to Florida by 1 or 10 or 30 again, and Tennessee can still find their way to bowl eligibility. In this way, this Tennessee season feels a bit like what I assume it used to be in the Bluegrass: if you can get Florida, Georgia, or Tennessee (Alabama for us), fantastic. But you can still get to six wins without any of them.

Tennessee’s season, so far, has gone about the way you’d think: 32 points on Bowling Green, 56 on Tennessee Tech, and losing to Pitt when -3 in turnovers with a baker’s dozen penalties. In SP+, the Vols are actually up from their preseason projections, with a Top 25 defense and Top 10 special teams.

But it’s in this – the way we think – that opportunity remains stubbornly available to idiots and optimists alike.

The two highest lines the Vols have faced against Florida both took place in December. Where we know this game is here, in September, the SEC opener. It is, most often, the first thing you can talk yourself into. And, most recently, it’s felt like the last thing you could talk yourself into.

If the Vols are not who we think – in a good way – Saturday night is the best opportunity for it to present itself. To be surprised. To be delighted.

I don’t know how to not come to this game with hope, foolish or not. The only way not to, as we learned last year, is to move it to December. And I don’t know how long it will take to move that Vegas line back towards something more reasonable in this series. Or, with Texas and Oklahoma coming, I suddenly don’t know how much longer we’ll be doing this with them every year any way. And unlike the Alabama series, we haven’t been beaten badly enough, recently enough, to make me something other than sad about that for now.

The past has clearly trended in the wrong direction for Tennessee in this rivalry. The present can’t be overly harmed by Saturday night. It’s only the future – the tantalizing, probably improbable fast-forward button on all this business – that’s really up for grabs. And maybe that’s always how it was when Kentucky played these guys under Rich Brooks: we can move the program forward without this one, but hey, we’ll shoot our shot and see if we can’t move it forward faster anyway.

It’s opportunity, somewhere between nowhere and now here. It may not last long Saturday night, and we may get right back to the business of finding six wins.

But it’s still the Wednesday of Florida week. For three decades now, and who knows how much longer, it’s the week to get your hopes up, because those hopes have paid off juuuuuuuuuuuuust enough to do it one more time.

And it’s only Wednesday.

Go Vols.

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.