Appreciate the sentiment and a lot of the reasoning. But your post is the ultimate optimistic, best case scenario post, and if you’re a Tennessee fan, you know better than to go that route, it’s been proven to be fool’s gold over the last 10-15 dreadful seasons.
I think Tennessee’s ceiling is 7 wins this year, that Florida, Georgia, Alabama, likely Miss State are certain, ironclad losses. If Tennessee doesn’t play much better and with great focus, that either BYU or, more likely, UAB, will beat them in Neyland. I think we beat Kentucky as they come back to earth to being the .500 program that they are. I think SCar is a tossup/lean towards SCar, and that Tennessee will lose 1 of Vandy and Missouri. We’ll surely beat our other 2 poor OOC opponents. Just how it is until Pruitt, who was responsible for a school-record 6 losses by 25 points or more last year (Jones only lost 3 such games in 2017’s awful season), proves otherwise.