Gameday on Rocky Top

Genuine enthusiasm, genuine question: Saturday night will be the most meaningful November home game since…?

Long before 12-team playoffs, Tennessee’s schedule has been perpetually front-loaded. Since the AP poll expanded to a Top 25 in 1989, Saturday will be just the eighth November contest in Neyland between two ranked teams. And before then, the most recent ranked vs ranked November game in Knoxville was in 1960.

Even so, not all of those contests are created equal:

November Top 25 Matchups in Knoxville, 1989-2025

• 1990: #1 Notre Dame 34 #9 Tennessee 29
• 1993: #7 Tennessee 45 #13 Louisville 10
• 1997: #8 Tennessee 44 #24 Southern Miss 20
• 1998: #1 Tennessee 28 #10 Arkansas 24
• 1999: #4 Tennessee 38 #24 Notre Dame 14
• 2006: #13 LSU 28 #8 Tennessee 24
• 2023: #1 Georgia 38 #21 Tennessee 10
• 2025: #14 Tennessee vs #18 Oklahoma

If the question is most meaningful, the top two are obvious, both involving the number one team in jeopardy in the final seconds. 1998 Arkansas and 1990 Notre Dame are two of the most memorable wins and losses in Neyland Stadium history, on any date.

After that? The 1999 Notre Dame game was incredibly important in the BCS era; the Vols jumped from fifth to second in those rankings after the win before falling at Arkansas the next week. 2006 LSU is the kind of game that would’ve meant everything in a 12-team playoff (and produced a different outcome if instant replay existed).

And in that era now, Saturday night will mean everything again.

In this dance between the journey and the destination, Tennessee’s missteps are still waiting for their final analysis. It could be that the near miss against Georgia and the pick six at Alabama, while deeply frustrating, end up being part of the head-nods of an 8-4/9-3 regular season, we’ll get ’em next year, etc.

But that everything is still indeed alive and well, and will be Saturday night. In this playoff era, what you do every Saturday matters so much more in building a resume. And more than at any point since the Vols went to Vanderbilt and won last November, this one will help define the others.

Even unfamiliar as we are with this kind of game at home in November, that’s the way it works at this level, this time of year. This one is everything. And winning will make the next ones worth even more.

Go Vols.

Two weeks and two overtimes ago, #3 Penn State had #6 Oregon in 2nd-and-13 and a 24-17 lead. The Ducks converted on 4th-and-1 after 3rd-and-8, then tied it, then scored a touchdown in one play in the second overtime. Then Drew Allar threw an interception the play after that. Then they lost at UCLA. Then they lost to Northwestern. And now James Franklin is fired.

A question Penn State fans will surely ask themselves today, and take no pleasure in doing so: how long will we have to wait for a better chance than this? Or the final minute of the national semifinal last year? You’re right there. And then you’re not. And then it feels like it’s gone.

Tennessee is a good example of how you can accelerate the process, past and present. Josh Heupel and crew could be here a million years, and we still couldn’t talk enough about where Tennessee was during the entire month beforehand – when we didn’t know if Jeremy Pruitt would be our coach again or not, or what the NCAA might have to say about any of that – and where they went next. That was January of 2021, and Tennessee was number one in the college football playoff rankings on November 1, 2022. Or the questions we all worried about when Tennessee lost its college football playoff quarterback at the end of spring practice? And then how we all just got to go right back to thinking, “Yep, let’s win today,” about thirty minutes into Syracuse.

That’s the idea we’re all chasing – that we can win every Saturday – and one Tennessee could believe in since Alabama three years ago. The Vols were +9 in Vegas that day, and haven’t been +10 or more against anyone since. This week opened at, you guessed it, +9.

This rivalry, with all its streakiness, doesn’t often see these programs operating at their best simultaneously. But the last four years have given us #3 vs #6, #11 vs #17, #7 vs #11, and now #6 vs #11. Believe it or not, that makes this the first time Tennessee and Alabama have faced each other in four consecutive ranked vs ranked matchups. We had six ranked matchups in eight years between 1989-1996, but Alabama was unranked in 1990 and the Vols in 1994. And between 2005 and 2022, only the 2016 game featured both teams in the polls at the same time.

Last year’s game ended up being a play-in for the playoffs. This year, it can sometimes feel like Tennessee’s narrative is on pause, frozen back there at the end of regulation against Georgia, and we’re waiting to see how much that’s going to matter.

That’s the thing about losing when you believe you can win every Saturday: it hurts. A lot. But history also shows how you never really know how much early season losses will hurt in the end. For all the talk about the Hobnailed Boot, that one ended up costing Tennessee zero: the Vols are still in Atlanta up ten points in the second quarter, a date in the BCS title game on the horizon, an eventual loss that truly cost us. Other times, it hurts when you lose, and then it hurts more. 2015 Florida is the best/worst recent example of this, so many moments in that one frozen until the past few years helped them thaw, where any one moment goes differently and you win in The Swamp. But none of them did, and we lost, and at the end of the season, that loss sends Florida to Atlanta instead of the Vols.

The ultimate fate of Tennessee’s season won’t get decided on Saturday; we learned this dance last year with a 12-team playoff, when the Vols went to Athens and fought but fell. There is a ton of football left to be played, where the margins are finer than ever and so are the moments. But Saturday is an incredible opportunity for Tennessee to retake control of its own story. Win, and you’ve taken three of four from Alabama for the first time since 2003-06.

And whatever your thoughts on Tennessee’s imperfections in beating Mississippi State and Arkansas, win is still the only goal on the road in Tuscaloosa. And that one still hasn’t gotten old yet.

Much to be thankful for. And much on the table Saturday night.

Go Vols.

In college basketball, one of my favorite things is being able to visit sites like KenPom and Torvik shortly after a game ends to see how it impacted the big picture: new projected records, was this win really as good as we thought it was, etc.

It looks like ESPN is leaning into that with FPI, which already shows the biggest change that happened to Tennessee yesterday.

It didn’t necessarily take place in Atlanta, where the Vols were favored by two touchdowns and won by 19. The good was what you wanted to see, particularly with Joey Aguilar. That leads to the natural follow-up of, “Now let’s see him do it against SEC defenses.”

Tennessee, one of if not the best SEC defense last year, played much of the second half deeeeeeeep into the depth chart at corner and defensive tackle. I liked what we saw up front when everyone was accounted for. On the back end, we have no idea when we might even see everyone accounted for; here’s hoping for good news on the injury front with Rickey Gibson (and hello, Ty Redmond).

Georgia comes to town in two weeks, and now it feels like that one carries even more anticipation. And that too might have less to do with anything that happened anywhere in the state of Georgia yesterday.

In the advanced stats and big picture conversations, the most interesting thing that happened to Tennessee yesterday happened to Alabama.

The Tide plummeted ten spots in FPI after their loss to Florida State; in that metric, Alabama would now be a three-point underdog to Tennessee on a neutral field. Meanwhile, Tennessee’s schedule – on paper – continues to look beneficial. In long ago friend of the blog SEC Mike’s power rankings, Tennessee (4th) plays Georgia (3rd)…and our other seven games are against the bottom seven teams, plus or minus what happens to South Carolina today.

FPI gives Tennessee a 50/50 chance to make the playoffs with 9.5 projected wins, with some portion of that equation including the “Who’s going to make the SEC title game?” conversation. We’ll see what happens with the rest of Tennessee’s schedule; Florida (South Florida) and Oklahoma (Michigan) have interesting matchups next. And hey, in Tuscaloosa they’ll continue to leave the altar open, we’ll see what happens there too.

Look, it’s probably way too early for both, but data is more valuable than narratives at this point. FPI is also updating strength of record and game control metrics now, and Tennessee is scoring high marks there so far. But there is a version of this now where Georgia is a significantly more valuable opportunity than anything else on Tennessee’s schedule. And if that’s the case – or even if it’s not – it’s a big, big Saturday coming up in Knoxville.

Go Vols.

Among the many things we still haven’t mastered in college football world: large proclamations about next season, made around 10 days before this season starts. “This is June content!!!”, screamed the old blogger.

Even so, I’m still a sucker for a good hypothetical scheduling conversation. So, how might we expect Tennessee to do against a nine-game SEC schedule, with the league also keeping the one Big Ten/ACC/Big 12/Notre Dame requirement?

Here’s what history suggests.

I’ve included all the data at the bottom of this post, but we’re going to start with what I think is the most realistic and healthiest version of this idea.

If we’re looking for what to expect from Tennessee, I think it’s most helpful to look at the years when Tennessee was behaving like, you know, Tennessee. That’s far more expansive than a few years in the mid-to-late-90s. But as it relates to the Vols in the conversation, I’d take out 2008-14, and 2017-21. One thing we don’t talk about as often these days because we’re busy enjoying the ceiling: I think the current administration at UT has raised our floor. I don’t expect the Vols to go through four coaches in six years again as they did from 2008-14, and I don’t expect the bottoming out we saw in 2017-18 or the covid weirdness of 2020.

If you take those years out, we’re left with 21 of the 33 seasons since the SEC expanded to divisional play in 1992:

• 1992-2007, Tennessee’s extended run from Johnny Majors through Phillip Fulmer
• 2015 and 2016, two rebuilt and competitive seasons under Butch Jones
• 2022-2024, everything after year one under Josh Heupel

In those 21 seasons, Tennessee went 121-47 in the SEC (regular season), a .720 winning percentage. If you play that same percentage out for nine games, that’s an average of 6.48 regular season conference wins.

In that same stretch, the Vols went 15-6 against their marquee regular season non-conference opponent, a similar winning percentage of .714. So, if we were using the ol’ win total machine, we’d add another .714 wins to that 6.48 average. Then let’s assume the Vols go 2-0 in their remaining two lower-level games.

So the past tells us that, in the years when Tennessee is healthy and nationally competitive, the Vols would historically average around 9.2 regular season wins with a nine-game SEC schedule and one additional power conference opponent.

That feels right to me: most importantly, an annual expectation that you’re in a 16-team playoff conversation, with 10-2 slightly more likely than 8-4. And that kind of number helps me feel more at home with this kind of schedule going forward…along with a celebration of getting to play every team in this league twice in four years.

The science is inexact, of course; if someone smarter than me makes their way to this post and wants to quantify Tennessee’s average strength of schedule in the past to what we might see going forward in a meaningful way, go for it. But in the national conversation, don’t let Tennessee’s “easier” schedule last year and this blind you to the fact that the Vols have played Alabama, Florida, and Georgia every single season since 1992, while still scheduling a premier non-conference slate for most of that time. Either way, I like how this historical comparison helps show how championship competitiveness can still be the goal for Tennessee going forward.

Other versions of this data:

• Total Data 1992-2024: .571 SEC winning percentage, .563 major non-conf winning pct., 7.7 projected wins
• Peak Data 1993-2001: .819 SEC winning pct, .889 major non-conf winning pct., 10.26 projected wins
• Josh Heupel Data 2021-2024: .625 SEC winning pct., .750 major non-conf winning pct., 8.38 projected wins

So last season, we learned the rhythm of what it takes to make a 12-team playoff. As soon as we got that one down, the tempo changed again: new quarterback, short notice. In theory, that’s always a possibility in this new college football world, and now Tennessee and Joey Aguilar will be the biggest case study for how it might look in reality. But even if you didn’t lose your quarterback at the end of spring practice, reality is changing for every program.

(Which means it’s a good time to turn to one of our most constant sources:)

* The top 12 are now within a TD of each other
* FARMAGEDDON: K-State by 4.8
* Let me tell you about a scrappy underdog named Bama…
* Clemson: Returning production national champ
* Ret prod nat’l avg: 77% in ’21, 53% in ’25

UPDATED 2025 SP+ PROJECTIONS:https://t.co/4UnZgYBXQ8

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) August 14, 2025

If, in four years, the average team has gone from bringing back three-fourths of its production to half, you’re going to get more of the kind of parity that shows up even at the tippy top. Thus the Top 12 teams being within a touchdown of each other in SP+. And the 12th of those 12 is…Tennessee.

How much has changed around here since 2021? In a year with a new quarterback, preseason polls in the 18-24 demographic, and a Vegas win total of 8.5, the dominant fan emotion might be basic curiosity. And yet, Tennessee is still in the conversation. Not because we’re dramatic, but because we’re consistent. Less “will we be any good?”, more “how will we get it done this time?”.

In the last three years, the Vols finished sixth, 17th, and ninth in the AP poll, an average final ranking of 10.7. It’s not quite where we were in the mid-to-late 90s, with an average finish of 5.8 from 1995-99. But if you step back and look at the fullness of who Tennessee was from 1989-2007 – when the Vols spent nearly two decades in the conversation – our average ranking during those years was 10.1.

One reason this kind of consistency may not have set in yet? It got overly familiar around here in a hurry. As in, we’re really good at it:

Top 16 Finishes in Football, Men’s & Women’s Basketball, Baseball & Softball, 2022-23 thru 2024-25

1. Tennessee 13
2. Alabama 10
3. Texas 9
4. Duke 8
5. Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Oregon, UCLA 7

In major college athletics, nobody is better at playing themselves into the championship conversation than Tennessee.

That by itself is amazing, and the context follows suit:

• Only Tennessee and Texas have earned a Top 16 finish in each of these five sports in the last three years
• Only Tennessee and Alabama have earned more than three Top 16 finishes in football and men’s basketball combined in the last three years
• In the three years before covid, Tennessee had only four Top 16 finishes in these five sports (2019 men’s basketball, 2017-19 softball)

And the Vols aren’t just getting to their respective Sweet 16s and bowing out. Men’s basketball had played in one Elite Eight ever three years ago, and now has two in a row. Softball continues to knock knock knock with another semifinal appearance back in June. No such 16-team fun exists in football (yet), but if it did the Vols would’ve been favored to advance with home playoff games in 2022 and 2024. And, of course, we got the big ring in baseball.

The big rings won’t come every time; Danny White spoke on this in his interview with Volquest this week. But, as has long been the cry here, giving yourself a chance to get one? Being in the conversation? That’s the real prize. And as an institution, no one is better at that right now than Tennessee.

So here we go again, 2025-26 kicking off in a blissfully few number of days (in football; in women’s soccer, we’re off and running by beating the number one team in the nation). Tennessee is already one of just 13 programs who would’ve made at least two 16-team playoffs in the last three years; only five programs (Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State) would’ve made all three.

What will we be this fall? I’m not exactly sure, and neither are you. And I’m excited to find out, but that part isn’t new. That part always gets to be true. The why is never threatened.

It’s the how that intrigues me most. The best in the business tend to be the most adaptable (see also: Barnes, Rick). Josh Heupel and Tennessee had a Top 16 finish with an elite passing game in 2022, then another last year with defense and a running back who scored 22 touchdowns.

That guy might be RB1 for the Cleveland Browns, and the defense learned the last time out there is another level we want to get to against the other teams you’ll see when championships are on the line.

So yeah, new quarterback. But new in plenty of other places too, some with a higher ceiling in mind. The Vols will have to adapt. But we’re already good at that.

Maybe it’s fair to say the expectations aren’t ever really new here; at least in football at Tennessee, we’ve been to the mountaintop before.

But what has become warm and familiar once again is our ability to live into them. To chase the championship conversation as well as anyone in the nation.

How will we do it this time? We’ll find out together in just 11 days.

Go Vols.

On this Thanksgiving Weekend, play the hits, baby.

Four years ago on December 19, news broke of an NCAA investigation into Tennessee’s program. We essentially didn’t know who Tennessee’s football coach would be in 2021 for more than a month, with Danny White hired as athletic director on January 21 and Josh Heupel coming on board six days later. In that winter, approximately one million players entered the transfer portal. Coming out of the weirdness of covid, Tennessee’s football program felt more vulnerable than at any point in my lifetime.

And four years and one or two days later, Tennessee will play in the first 12-team College Football Playoff.

That’s the reward for a 10-2 regular season, capped off by an incredibly impressive performance against Vanderbilt today. When the Dores ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown and Dylan Sampson fumbled two plays later, a case of the oh no’s threatened to break out all over the Volunteer State. But then/now, you can start to remember.

I’m typing this in our living room looking at our Christmas tree, where a national championship ornament hangs from Omaha. The basketball team just finished its most impressive season ever, and the current squad would be favored over them in KenPom.

The football team won ten games two years ago, beat Bama two years ago, in what all felt a bit like a fever dream. This? This feels much more real, in part because there are still cigar remnants on campus from this season too.

You can believe in Tennessee.

Because it was real, it wasn’t perfect. But consider not just where Tennessee has been, but the rest of college football this season. In what SP+ considers one of the best conferences we’ve ever seen, playoff contenders went on the road last week and left unhappy. Georgia needed eight overtimes and well past midnight at home to survive just a few hours ago.

So yeah, Tennessee got down 14-0.

And then Tennessee hammered Vanderbilt.

The Vols finished with 538 yards at 7.4 yards per play. Vanderbilt finished with 212 yards at 4.3 yards per play. Given the circumstances and the start, the performance we saw from this team, including its still-young quarterback, might be their best of the season. Nico Iamaleava completed 78.2% of his passes, a season high against FBS foes. Four touchdowns is a season high in SEC play. He did all of that without Bru McCoy and no receptions from Squirrel White. On the ground, 42 yards trails only his 44 against Alabama in SEC play.

Meanwhile, Dylan Sampson went for 178 yards and became the all-time rushing leader at the University of Tennessee. DeSean Bishop added 61 yards on 13 carries. The very best Tennessee teams of the past had the talent and depth to make you believe in the next man up because he was wearing the same uniform as the other guy. Today, especially in the second half, it was Bishop and Mike Matthews and many others, who helped Tennessee win in style with everything on the line.

And everything is everything. Tennessee will be one of a dozen schools playing for the national championship. Depending on your opinion of the committee’s opinion of Ohio State, the Vols might already have enough to host a first round playoff game. But you can sit back and watch Notre Dame right now or Texas tonight to see if we get even more help.

When Tennessee had an exciting bowl opportunity in the past, it always felt like it extended Christmas just a little bit. But we’re in the Advent business now, a Happy Thanksgiving to get in the bracket, and now the waiting and watching for more. And more than anything, it’s another opportunity, and as we always say, the opportunities are the real prize. We won’t win the natty every year. But we can give ourselves a chance to. And the Vols did it beautifully today.

I’m an old blogger and an increasingly old preacher; in church world, it’s easy to think of things as pre-and-post-covid, or more specifically, since people came back to the building.

Since the people came back to the building at Tennessee:

Baseball

• 2021: Omaha
• 2022: SEC Champions, maybe the best regular season team ever
• 2023: Omaha
• 2024: National Champions as the #1 overall seed

Basketball

• 2022: SEC Tournament champions, 3 seed
• 2023: Sweet 16 via a win over Duke, 4 seed
• 2024: SEC Champions, Elite Eight, 2 seed
• 2025: Current highest KenPom rank in program history

Football

• 2021: Seven wins in year one
• 2022: 11-2, New Year’s Six, Beat Bama
• 2023: 9-4, Citrus Bowl
• 2024: 10-2, College Football Playoff, Beat Bama

The “worst” item on that list that doesn’t involve year one is a 9-4 football season last year, which would’ve tied the “best” season any Tennessee football team had from 2008-2021.

And every time one of these teams is in action, you can believe in their opportunity to make their very own version of the very best.

You can believe in Tennessee.

Go Vols.

Though the Vols lost control of their own destiny in Athens, the path forward is still fairly simple. Tennessee is 10th in the AP poll, just a few votes ahead of Miami at 11. But the Hurricanes and #13 SMU are headed toward a winner take all ACC title game, likely sending one to an automatic bid and one outside the field.

Meanwhile, there’s a healthy distance in votes between the Vols and Ole Miss at #9, a two-loss SEC pecking order I’d expect to remain in the playoff committee: Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee.

There is, obviously, an argument for Tennessee to be rated higher than Alabama, but Georgia muddies those waters in a three-way tie. If the conversation is between Tennessee and Ole Miss, Arkansas becomes the season’s most important talking point, which is not a place we want to be.

If the AP poll continues to be a mostly fair representation of the playoff committee’s thinking too, 10th will really mean the first team out, with three conference champions behind us.

Which means the Vols need to move up one spot.

One thing about this bubble, as opposed to the basketball one: we should probably get used to it. In the SEC, the odds of any team pulling off something like what Oregon has done this year are certainly lower. And other than 1998, I’m not sure any Tennessee team would’ve come to mid-November feeling like an absolute playoff lock unless we’re going back to facing the 90s versions of Kentucky and Vanderbilt at the end of the year.

But any one spot will do, of course. Here’s how that can happen. This uses FPI’s projected lines, with three points for home field advantage. And it doesn’t include anything from the ACC or Big 12, with those leagues projected to get just one spot each.

Saturday, November 23

Indiana at Ohio State (-10.5) – 12:00 PM – Fox

How much would Ohio State have to win by to drop the one-loss Hoosiers behind the two-loss Vols? It’s more than 10.5 for sure. Four touchdowns? Five? The ol’ eye test gets real valuable here.

Ole Miss (-9) at Florida – 12:00 PM – ABC

While Tennessee’s strength of schedule gets no help from both NC State and Oklahoma being 5-5, here come the Gators. Back-to-back upsets in Gainesville would put Florida a win over 1-9 Florida State away from a 7-5 season against the nation’s toughest schedule. But more than that, they’d knock the Rebels out of the playoff conversation and create space for Tennessee before sundown on Saturday.

UTEP at Tennessee (-41.5) – 1:00 PM – ESPN+

See, nothing to it!

Kentucky at Texas (-24.5) – 3:30 PM – ABC

The first of a handful of “not very likelies” involving teams ahead of Tennessee. Most of the teams we need to lose are moderately favored one Saturday, and heavily favored the next. Any lookahead here from the Horns?

Penn State (-10) at Minnesota – 3:30 PM – CBS

Here’s Penn State’s toughest challenge left, as Vol fans turn their eyes and ears back to the ol’ 3:30 CBS kick. If the Nittany Lions get their boats rowed, whatever their best win is, it’s not Alabama.

Army at Notre Dame (-21) – 7:00 PM – NBC

Should Army pull the upset off, we’ll want to watch out for a scenario where Boise State is ranked above Tennessee and the Cadets finish undefeated. They’d also have to go through Tulane in the AAC title game to get there.

Alabama (-13.5) at Oklahoma – 7:30 PM – ABC

Overall, Tennessee’s resume benefits from wins by Alabama and Georgia. But either school picking up a third loss could also clear a path for two-loss Tennessee.

Friday, November 29

Mississippi State at Ole Miss (-25.5) – 3:30 PM – ABC

Not very likely, but Egg Bowl, so we’ll see.

Georgia Tech at Georgia (-19.5) – 7:30 PM – ABC

Not very likely, and even less Egg Bowl, but Georgia Tech is certainly the feistier opponent.

Saturday, November 30 (kickoff times TBD)

Tennessee (-9.5) at Vanderbilt

Gotta get this one right, or none of this matters.

Texas (-9.5) at Texas A&M

If A&M wins at Auburn this week, where they’re -2.5 in FPI, they can make their way to Atlanta with a win in this one. That could/should create a scenario where a 10-3 Aggies team who loses to Alabama is behind the Vols. Texas has just one loss, but from a resume standpoint should now clearly be behind Tennessee if they both finish with two. The Vols played Georgia closer in Athens than the Horns did in Austin, and again, Alabama.

Maryland at Penn State (-22.5)

Purdue at Indiana (-33)

A pair of unlikely Big Ten home upsets.

Notre Dame (-7) at USC

Though you’ll probably have to wait until the end of next week for it, if you’re looking for just one upset, statistically this is the most likely scenario. The Trojans have played seven one-possession games so far this year, an insane amount, and took Penn State to overtime in LA. Since losing to NIU and beating Louisville 31-24 in September, Notre Dame has won every game by at least three possessions. It’s an emotional back-to-back test for the Irish, but they passed with flying colors against Navy earlier this year.

Auburn at Alabama (-20.5)

Hugh Freeze coaches well against the Tide, but this would be an all-timer.

Most Likely Upsets by FPI

1. Notre Dame (-7) at USC November 30
2. Ole Miss (-9) at Florida November 23
3. Texas (-9.5) at Texas A&M November 30 (probably needs an additional A&M loss to Auburn or in Atlanta)
4. Penn State (-10) at Minnesota November 23

Either way, you’ve got incredibly relevant football to Tennessee in every television window this Saturday, plus two next Friday, and then perhaps a last/best chance on Saturday afternoon/evening. The Vols have to do their part. But we’ve still got plenty of chances to see someone else do theirs.

Go Vols.

This week during Big Orange Give, someone from the university gave me a Power T sticker for the letter T on my keyboard. It’s the simplest thing. And maybe these have been around for years and years and I’ve just been oblivious. But all week, it’s made me grin to look down and see it there between the R and the Y. It’s small, but it stands out.

What stands out in the football conversation this week? We’re all new to 12-team playoff committee rankings, and have very little experience listening for our name in playoff conversations at all. In that first bracket last week, it felt surreal to see us there, at least to me; the latest piece of gratitude for how far this place has come.

It was a similar feeling two seasons ago, when the Vols were atop the initial rankings. That too stood out and made me grin, Tennessee’s name with the number one next to it.

It didn’t last, for reasons that had much to do with Georgia. And that was okay; the ride was still exhilarating, still new, and opportunity was indeed still out there.

This set of rankings has led to more consternation. Again, we’re light on experience here, in part alongside the whole country. Everyone other than Oregon is probably feeling some anxiety. But I’ve heard a lot more this week on what will happen to the Vols if they lose than how we can, you know, win.

As the bubble creeps into our football vocabulary, so too does this idea from basketball: Saturday is probably the hardest ask. Plenty of great Tennessee teams have found their way to Rupp Arena in February, where we’ve pointed out the truth that, hey, beating this Kentucky team on the road is actually more challenging than anything we’d have to do in the NCAA Tournament. We knew coming in that winning at Georgia would be the most difficult Saturday of the season.

But don’t lose the plot. If you’re in the playoff conversation, you’re in the championship conversation. You’re here believing Tennessee can give themselves a chance to win the whole thing. In FPI and Kelley Ford’s ratings, the best team in the nation is Alabama. The Vols would be about +4 in Knoxville if we ran that back this weekend, which is about where it was when it actually happened, and it actually happened, again. In those ratings, the Vols should be about +6 in Athens this weekend instead of the +10 where we’re hanging out right now in real life.

But in this very real life, Tennessee can give themselves a chance to make anything actually happen. And if we’re there – especially if we’re there after all these years somewhere else – perhaps we should spend more time enjoying questions not about what’ll happen if we lose on Saturday, but how we can win.

Nico Iamaleava’s health and the uncertainty of his status complicates that conversation, and rightfully so. So let’s focus on what we do know:

Tennessee Defense National Rankings

Category	National Rank
Scoring Defense	5th
Yards Per Carry	5th
Yards Per Pass	17th
Yards Per Play	3rd
TFLs Per Game	7th
3rd Down Conv.	2nd
4th Down Conv.	6th
Red Zone Scoring	5th
Red Zone TD%	3rd
10+ Yard Plays	18th
20+ Yard Plays	8th
30+ Yard Plays	2nd

How many teams scored 20+ points on a Tennessee defense, 1989-present

• Four: 1989, 1996, 2005
• Three: 1993, 1998
• Zero: 2024

Again, that is absurd.

It’s been absurd all year, and it’s been somewhat obscured all year. In part because this team is elite in a different way than we thought they’d be. And in part because defense can be less exciting to talk about. Note the 1993 Vols up there; longtime readers here may already know I’m getting ready to say they’re the highest-rated team in SP+ in program history. But I/we always refer to them as “Heath Shuler’s Vols”, when in fact that defense – Shane Bonham, Scott Galyon, Ben Talley, DeRon Jenkins, Jason Parker, etc. – was flat getting after dudes all year too.

The only other Vol squad in the Top 25 era to surrender 20+ points just three times is the 1998 national champions. And even they had flashes of vulnerability to Donovan McNabb and Anthony Lucas; maybe Georgia’s talent will create similar opportunities. But you and I have both already seen this group hold Alabama’s offense – currently third in the nation in SP+ – to four yards per play.

Whatever happens on Saturday, we’ll have the conversation that follows it. Any version of that conversation will probably include some, “But what if we lose to Vanderbilt?!”; the bracket courts chaos.

But Tennessee’s defense has brought order all year, small font in preseason making the biggest, simplest difference every single Saturday.

Let’s worry about what’ll happen when we lose if we do. Until then, with this team and this defense? Let’s go win this thing.

Because that remains the biggest prize: the ability to say let’s go win them all.

Go Vols.

In a sentence or two, who was Tennessee thought to be at the start of the year?

An elite quarterback prospect could lead the offense back to Josh Heupel’s standard of excellence. The defense has an NFL pass rusher but questions in the secondary. Something like that, right?

Who is Tennessee today? An elite defense – not one player, but the whole unit, including the secondary. And an offense that, when it hits the big play? Look out.

The opportunities feel the same for both versions. Tennessee will come to November at 6-1, somewhere in the Top 10, and in every playoff conversation. Every team in the SEC now has a loss. The last two unbeatens in league play face each other in Aggieland Saturday night. The Vols control their own destiny.

The gap in perception between who we thought this team would be and who they actually are can naturally lead to knee-jerk uncertainty when a drive doesn’t go our way. But the fact that the Vols are exactly where we hoped they’d be even though they look different than we thought they would? I think that’s a credit to all involved.

Because who they also are is the team that beat Bama, again.

In the second half last night, Tennessee found those big plays:

• A 36-yard run by Dylan Sampson and 27-yard run by Nico Iamaleava on the first touchdown drive
• Nico to Dont’e Thornton for 55 yards on the next drive on 3rd-and-6
• Nico to Chris Brazzell for 16 and the score on 3rd-and-5

(There are so many great shots and videos of that play, including the photo on this post; shout out to whoever is running UT’s twitter for calling it “The ol’ Brazzell Dazzle!”)

In Hendon Hooker’s two seasons, the Vols averaged 5.6 and 5.9 plays of 20+ yards per game against SEC foes. Last year, that number dropped to 3.6. Halfway home this season, the Vols have 16 plays of 20+ yards in four SEC games: progress over last season, but not as high as what we remember or, probably, what we imagined.

But with this offense and this defense together?

Because even the Han Solos among us didn’t imagine this defense.

Tennessee Defense National Rankings

• Points Per Game: 4th
• Yards Per Carry: 2nd
• Yards Per Pass: 21st
• Yards Per Play: 2nd
• TFLs Per Game: 4th
• Third Down Conversions: 2nd
• Fourth Down Conversions: 5th
• Red Zone Scoring: 6th
• Red Zone TD%: 5th
• 20+ Yard Plays: 9th
• 30+ Yard Plays: 1st

That is absurd.

And all of that is happening without the Vols really dominating two of the stats we tend to default to defensively: Tennessee is just 54th nationally in sacks at 2.14 per game, and 40th nationally in turnovers gained with 11.

We have somewhere between six and ten games left in this season; plenty more story to be told here. But what this defense is doing so far, and what it just did against our two biggest rivals, would go on any list of the best you’ve ever seen.

The Vols are 2-1 against Alabama in the last three years, not seen since 2004-06. Four wins against Alabama and Florida in three years hasn’t been done since the Vols swept them in 2003 and 2004.

The Third Saturday in October is defined by streaks, one program excelling at the expense of the other in some ways. But in those in between years, when both programs are ranked? That’s happened just 13 times in 36 years of the AP Top 25. Of those 13 meetings, nine were decided by 14 points or less, and seven by one possession. We remember the big streak-busters: the Vols in ’95, Bama in ’02. Tennessee’s win two years ago carried 15 years of that weight and neared perfection from an entertainment perspective.

But most often, when both these teams are good, you get glorious imperfection. Alabama winning 24-19 in 1991, 17-10 en route to the title in 1992, then Tennessee breaking their winning streak with a 17-17 tie in 1993. Jay Graham’s run in 1996, the final points in a 20-13 chaotic thing of beauty. The Vols winning in Tuscaloosa 21-7 against Shaun Alexander in 1999, the Tide with the ugliest of all in 2005, 6-3.

This type of game is the standard when both programs are good but not perfect. And it’s much easier to be perfect when the other program isn’t good. Saturday fit that script to a giant power T.

Two years ago, Tennessee didn’t win because of luck: we missed an extra point and Bama gained a scoop and score. But the Vols also played what we thought at the time was about as well as we could play, and it was enough. This time, both teams struggled far more often, at times with themselves. But the stats tell the story: Tennessee outgained Alabama 414 to 314, Jalen Milroe needed 45 passes just to get 239 yards, and Dylan Sampson continued his legendary season with 139 yards on 26 carries. Tennessee won because they were the better team. And both of these teams can be better still.

That’s the bye week story for Tennessee. Keep getting better. But for us as fans, I think there’s also freedom from beating Florida and Alabama to reembrace this team not for who we thought they would be, but the real beauty of who they actually are. Because who they actually are is once again good enough to believe the answer to all our questions can be yes.

Go Vols.