From TOS -
By now, even the most diehard Tennessee fans sporting checkerboard slacks are growing weary of daily puff pieces fawning over Team 120 five months out from the season opener.
You know the narratives — Joshua Dobbs is college football’s most important player, the Jalen Hurd + Alvin Kamara combo is the league’s most dynamic and all that All-SEC brawn coming back on defense should be feared by all.
The praise is as loud as it is terrifying. It’s cautious optimism on steroids plus a Moonshine chaser, headlines birthed soon after the Vols’ obliteration of Northwestern that most likely make Butch Jones toss and turn playing the what-if game rather than regulate what he can control within his program.
We’ve pretty much crowned Tennessee as preseason SEC East champs even though the Vols bought stock in blowing late-game leads last fall and haven’t tasted victory against Florida since Anchorman released in theaters (Yep, it’s been that long).
But without sounding like I own eight seats on the West side of Neyland as a card-carrying Tennessee booster, the hype’s warranted.
Know why?
Tennessee’s schedule, above all other extenuating circumstances, sets up nicely for early reservations in Atlanta. Heck, if the Vols get to their mid-October bye week unscathed, I’d encourage you to look into travel plans at both College Football Playoff semifinal sites.
Let’s take a closer look at Tennessee’s 2016 schedule and three major points of emphasis:
1) Pre-SEC tuneups should give Tennessee a chance to figure out what works and what doesn’t without enduring the harsh reality of an early-season loss. This wasn’t the case last season after the Vols went toe-to-toe with Oklahoma, a team that wound up winning the Big 12 and finishing a win away from the national title game, in Week 2. The showdown against Virginia Tech at Bristol on Sept. 10 is sandwiched between home games vs. Appalachian State and Ohio, teams that can’t match up athletically. The Hokies will be a competitive Power 5 under first-year coach Justin Fuente, but there’s not enough there yet to compete for an ACC Championship as an unranked team and questions offensively should linger in the early going. Advantage, Vols
2) Both of Tennessee’s toughest games, must-wins if you want to call them that, come at home. Here’s where YOU, one of the 100,000-plus expected to pack Knoxville seven times this fall, come into play. If the Vols’ defense is as good as advertised and its edge rushers stay healthy, Tennessee’s league opener against Florida on Sept. 24 may not deliver the high-end drama we’ve come to expect in this matchup.
All that noise should disrupt any sort of rhythm new quarterback Luke Del Rio hopes to find in Florida’s first road game of the season. Don’t give up the lead late and that’s a win for Tennessee, despite that 800-pound gorilla in the room that dominates the rivalry conversation.
The second half of this equation is Alabama, one of the Vols’ long-standing rivals in a series that has lost most — if not, all — of its luster over the last decade. Many of Tennessee’s nine losses to the Crimson Tide haven’t been close since 2007 haven’t been close, but this year’s matchup is different. The rosters are comparable and this time, Big Orange has the talent edge in several individual position battles.
If the Vols split these two games and manage to win the rest — and they’ll be favored to in all but maybe one (at Georgia) — this season would be a raving success and Tennessee could be CFP-bound if it wins in Atlanta. So what’s the silver lining in this season’s cross-divisional games? Tennessee won’t play Ole Miss or LSU during the regular season, two nationally-ranked squads equally as impressive from the outset as the Crimson Tide. We know how much trouble the Rebels have given Saban back-to-back seasons …
3) After battling Alabama on Oct. 15, which many are projecting as an early preview of the SEC Championship Game, Tennessee won’t play another team that managed a winning record in 2015 the rest of the way. That’s right, the final five games are reserved for stat-padding against the bottom-dwellers in the East — South Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Vandy — and Tennessee Tech. The Vols’ path to the national title conversation will be abundantly clear when Jones and Co. freshen up post-Alabama prior to a road trip to Columbia, S.C. at the end of the month.
Great teams build strength and pick up steam as the season wears on and 2016 will be no different. Anyone who watches SEC football and talks about this stuff for a living knows schedule favorability trumps all when projecting a division title winner and Tennessee should have no complaints.
By now, even the most diehard Tennessee fans sporting checkerboard slacks are growing weary of daily puff pieces fawning over Team 120 five months out from the season opener.
You know the narratives — Joshua Dobbs is college football’s most important player, the Jalen Hurd + Alvin Kamara combo is the league’s most dynamic and all that All-SEC brawn coming back on defense should be feared by all.
The praise is as loud as it is terrifying. It’s cautious optimism on steroids plus a Moonshine chaser, headlines birthed soon after the Vols’ obliteration of Northwestern that most likely make Butch Jones toss and turn playing the what-if game rather than regulate what he can control within his program.
We’ve pretty much crowned Tennessee as preseason SEC East champs even though the Vols bought stock in blowing late-game leads last fall and haven’t tasted victory against Florida since Anchorman released in theaters (Yep, it’s been that long).
But without sounding like I own eight seats on the West side of Neyland as a card-carrying Tennessee booster, the hype’s warranted.
Know why?
Tennessee’s schedule, above all other extenuating circumstances, sets up nicely for early reservations in Atlanta. Heck, if the Vols get to their mid-October bye week unscathed, I’d encourage you to look into travel plans at both College Football Playoff semifinal sites.
Let’s take a closer look at Tennessee’s 2016 schedule and three major points of emphasis:
1) Pre-SEC tuneups should give Tennessee a chance to figure out what works and what doesn’t without enduring the harsh reality of an early-season loss. This wasn’t the case last season after the Vols went toe-to-toe with Oklahoma, a team that wound up winning the Big 12 and finishing a win away from the national title game, in Week 2. The showdown against Virginia Tech at Bristol on Sept. 10 is sandwiched between home games vs. Appalachian State and Ohio, teams that can’t match up athletically. The Hokies will be a competitive Power 5 under first-year coach Justin Fuente, but there’s not enough there yet to compete for an ACC Championship as an unranked team and questions offensively should linger in the early going. Advantage, Vols
2) Both of Tennessee’s toughest games, must-wins if you want to call them that, come at home. Here’s where YOU, one of the 100,000-plus expected to pack Knoxville seven times this fall, come into play. If the Vols’ defense is as good as advertised and its edge rushers stay healthy, Tennessee’s league opener against Florida on Sept. 24 may not deliver the high-end drama we’ve come to expect in this matchup.
All that noise should disrupt any sort of rhythm new quarterback Luke Del Rio hopes to find in Florida’s first road game of the season. Don’t give up the lead late and that’s a win for Tennessee, despite that 800-pound gorilla in the room that dominates the rivalry conversation.
The second half of this equation is Alabama, one of the Vols’ long-standing rivals in a series that has lost most — if not, all — of its luster over the last decade. Many of Tennessee’s nine losses to the Crimson Tide haven’t been close since 2007 haven’t been close, but this year’s matchup is different. The rosters are comparable and this time, Big Orange has the talent edge in several individual position battles.
If the Vols split these two games and manage to win the rest — and they’ll be favored to in all but maybe one (at Georgia) — this season would be a raving success and Tennessee could be CFP-bound if it wins in Atlanta. So what’s the silver lining in this season’s cross-divisional games? Tennessee won’t play Ole Miss or LSU during the regular season, two nationally-ranked squads equally as impressive from the outset as the Crimson Tide. We know how much trouble the Rebels have given Saban back-to-back seasons …
3) After battling Alabama on Oct. 15, which many are projecting as an early preview of the SEC Championship Game, Tennessee won’t play another team that managed a winning record in 2015 the rest of the way. That’s right, the final five games are reserved for stat-padding against the bottom-dwellers in the East — South Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Vandy — and Tennessee Tech. The Vols’ path to the national title conversation will be abundantly clear when Jones and Co. freshen up post-Alabama prior to a road trip to Columbia, S.C. at the end of the month.
Great teams build strength and pick up steam as the season wears on and 2016 will be no different. Anyone who watches SEC football and talks about this stuff for a living knows schedule favorability trumps all when projecting a division title winner and Tennessee should have no complaints.
