Bill Connelly’s final 2021 SP+ projections dropped this week at ESPN+, one of our favorite signs of the season getting close. We love SP+ for the way it helps us look beyond a team’s record in determining its true strength, and the value it places on every snap. The easy joke here is, of course, “That’s good, because Tennessee’s record may not be very good this year…”. But SP+ actually offers a little more optimism on that front for the Vols.
SP+ is one of the best indicators of how the Vols have both struggled for 13 years now, and the worst of it has happened most recently.
Butch Jones’ final season in 2017 is still the basement, with last season the second-worst of the last 15 years. And Jeremy Pruitt’s first season just edges past Butch Jones’ first season in rounding out the four lowest ratings for Tennessee since 2006.
(For more history, here’s our look at 50+ years of Tennessee in SP+ from January 2019.)
The good news here: Tennessee’s 2021 projection has the Vols north of these four worst seasons.
If we group these past seasons into tiers – something we did with KenPom projections for Tennessee’s last basketball season here – the 2021 Vols are projected to escape the basement in SP+. Tennessee’s five worst seasons of the last 15 years check in at:
- 2017: 1.2 (points better than the average team on a neutral field)
- 2020: 4.6
- 2013: 5.1
- 2018: 5.5
- 2011: 6.9
Tennessee’s 2021 projection is 8.3, making them essentially four point favorites over last year’s team from the get-go. This makes the best projected comparison for this team not the worst of our worst, but two other seasons:
- 2010: 7.7
- 2021: 8.3 (preseason projection)
- 2019: 10.8
If Josh Heupel’s first season ends up looking more like Derek Dooley’s and less like Butch Jones’ and Jeremy Pruitt’s, Tennessee will be moving in the right direction. And if the Vols can find success in close games the way Pruitt’s second team did, Tennessee can find itself on the right side of bowl eligibility.
What can we learn from 2010 and 2019?
Best teams still (mostly) out of reach. Dooley’s Year Zero Vols flirted with Oregon for the better part of three quarters, then found themselves losing by 35. The Vols were down just 13-10 at halftime to Alabama, but lost by 31. Pruitt’s 2019 Vols had a ton of chances to create a close game with Florida in the first half, cashed in none of them, and lost by 31. You get the picture.
But you’ll also recall Dooley’s Vols beating LSU on the first try in Baton Rouge, and Pruitt’s Vols at the goal line to cut Alabama’s lead to one possession. Dooley’s first team also cut Florida’s lead to seven with 11 minutes to play in 2010.
Add in a few points for home field advantage, and SP+ essentially has the Vols a 26-point underdog at Alabama and a two-touchdown underdog to Florida and Georgia. If those numbers actually held…that’s not a bad start for Josh Heupel. Since 2015, the Vols have only come within 30 points of Bama once, in that 35-13 loss in 2019. And two-score affairs with Florida and Georgia would be encouraging signs of progress.
Close games may abound (with anyone). Dooley’s 2010 Vols had a near miss with UAB, needing two overtimes to secure a 32-29 win. Pruitt’s 2019 Vols, of course, lost to Georgia State. Bowling Green may not quite be up to the challenge, but South Alabama (or Vanderbilt, depending on how we think of them at the time) may not qualify as sure things.
The 2019 Vols in particular were masters of close games, finding a way as one-possession underdogs to get it done against Mississippi State, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri.
One thing to note about the 2021 SP+ projections: Pittsburgh is right above Tennessee at 8.5, creating an immediate toss-up in week two. The same goes for Kentucky and Missouri, where Tennessee’s slight SP+ advantage in preseason would be negated by home field advantage. And Ole Miss clocks in at around -4 against the Vols in these projections – which also do not think highly, at all, of South Carolina – creating an expected win total that’s going to creep closest to 7-5.
Get better as the year goes on. Obviously you want to avoid doing it the way Pruitt’s 2019 Vols did by losing to Georgia State and BYU before getting blown out by Florida, but the end result on both of these comparison squads was pretty good. Dooley’s first year ended with a particularly sour note against North Carolina, but the Vols found their quarterback and won four in a row to close the regular season to earn bowl eligibility. Same with the 2019 squad, starting 1-4 but finishing at 8-5 after the Gator Bowl. That’s still the best any Tennessee team has done in the post-Fulmer era other than the 2015-16 squads.
The Vols don’t have a stud freshman (that we’re anticipating) coming off the bench in mid-October to save the day, and the Georgia game sits in November now, so you can’t coast to the finish line. But if Josh Heupel’s team can avoid a significant upset, get above .500 in close games, and grow as the season progresses? They’ll have an opportunity to earn bowl eligibility, and escape the worst-of-the-worst seasons Tennessee has encountered during this long journey of exile. That would be a good start.
