We fired up our Expected Win Total Machine this week as soon as the SEC released the new 2020 schedule. If you haven’t already, you can go there and put in your win probabilities for every game on Tennessee’s new schedule, and the machine will give you how many games you think the Vols will win this season. It’s one thing to say you think the Vols will go 6-4 with wins over abc and losses to xyz. But we find it to be a better, healthier exercise to assign win probabilities for each game to get a record projection.
What does a successful season look like now? Our community projects the Vols to win 5.82 games against this schedule. If you round up to a 6-4 finish, that would guarantee Tennessee beat at least one of its five preseason Top 15 opponents. Pre-pandemic, an 8-4 finish against the original schedule felt like the head-nod verdict: yep, okay, that’s probably what we should expect, moving on. But whereas an 8-4 finish against the original schedule didn’t guarantee you a marquee win, a 6-4 finish against a 10-game SEC slate should include at least one signature win.
As we know, not all 8-4’s are created equal, and neither will all 6-4’s this year. But some of the things we use to measure success – like a traditional January 1 bowl – may not be available this season. Signature wins will be more important than ever, but so too will overall progress in metrics like SP+. It still holds that one of the best ways to measure progress for the 2020 Vols is the, “We have a chance to win this game,” test. After 2001, the only Tennessee team not to lose at least one three-possession game is 2015. That would be a good list for the 2020 Vols to be on.
Everything is about the SEC East race. That should really always be the case. The original move of the Georgia game to November would’ve kept the Vols in the SEC East chase much longer than usual, just for the hope of knocking off the Dawgs in Athens towards the end of the season. Now Georgia is in week three, but I think Tennessee actually benefits from that trade: Florida is the season finale instead of a mid-November date, and the Gators’ schedule offers them a better chance to be the team to beat. Lose in week three to Georgia and you’re behind, but the Dawgs are in Tuscaloosa the very next week, where Tennessee could instantly get a game back. Simply by playing Alabama, Georgia is the easier team to catch in the standings if you don’t beat them head-to-head. And even if the Gators do find success against their lighter load, Tennessee can still knock them off in Knoxville in December. The Vols should stay in the race for a long time this season, and that in and of itself will feel very much like progress.
Trap opponents out of trap weeks. If we assume Vanderbilt and Arkansas don’t qualify as trap games because the Vols should be able to overwhelm them with talent, the remaining candidates are South Carolina, Missouri, and Kentucky…and the Cats only qualify because they haven’t won in Knoxville since 1984. But now, Tennessee gets trap opponents in weeks one and two. If we learned anything at all from Georgia State, the Vols shouldn’t be caught off guard out the gate. So while we didn’t want to play two non-Top 15 opponents back-to-back to help with the schedule’s overall rhythm, it’s a really good setup on the front end.
Here’s how our community rates Tennessee’s chances in each game:
- at South Carolina: 67.1%
- Missouri: 76.1%
- at Georgia: 30.0%
- Kentucky: 68.0%
- Alabama: 23.6%
- at Arkansas: 85.3%
- Texas A&M: 50.4%
- at Auburn: 46.9%
- at Vanderbilt: 88.6%
- Florida: 46.1%
