Phil Steele predicts order of finish for SEC Football in 2025

#26
#26
Without reading, I'm guessing Steele has UT slotted at #9 behind Txs, Uga, Ala, Uf, Lsu, Om, Ok, A&M . Maybe even behind Scar. Nico's leaving moved the Vols down 4-5 places in preseason rankings.
 
#30
#30
RiseToTheTop said:
"hard reset" lmaooo as if Nico was any good.


so dumb
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It is a hard reset because we lost Sampson, 4 guys on the O Line, the #2 tight end, 3 of our top 4 receivers, our 3 best D linemen, our best linebacker, and our best safety in addition to Nico. Oh, and our best returning player tore his ACL in the offseason, plus our starting tight end has been hurt all offseason. Hard to have more of a reset than that.
 
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#33
#33
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
New QB who had a pretty good year last year and a new OC. That’s the reasoning many have.
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I just don't see them going from 6 wins to competing for SEC but we will see. A lot of them have OU beating us in Knoxville, I don't see that either.

Us being lower in SEC pecking order is probably fair, though.
 
#34
#34
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
We won 10 last year with 2 wins coming on the final play and another game saw us leading by only 3 with 5 minutes left. It isn’t some huge stretch to say a team losing all we lost could be a few plays worse over the course of the season.
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You can make that argument for most college football teams. 7-5 in the fifth year of the Josh Heupel era would put him on the hot seat, IMO. We have a talented roster; a lot of it is young.
 
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#35
#35
There's one thing that darn near 7 decades of being a VOL fan has taught me ....If someone predicts UT at or towards the top then they are great....If they predict UT in the middle of the pack or lower, then they are FOS....LOL.
 
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#36
#36
volbound1700 said:
I just don't see them going from 6 wins to competing for SEC but we will see. A lot of them have OU beating us in Knoxville, I don't see that either.

Us being lower in SEC pecking order is probably fair, though.
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I don’t see them competing for the conference, but 9-3 or so wouldn’t shock me if the QB is as advertised.
 
#37
#37
AllVol11717 said:
I’m neither here nor there on Phil Steele as a reporter, but if you want to know why sports journalism has been nose diving in quality it’s because they have to cater to oversensitive fans that get vocally upset every time they don’t predict a top 3 finish for a team.

Also trying to grade a reporter’s pre-season predictions like a test is kinda asinine. You want them to be accurate, yet you want them to put us higher after two years of mediocre passing offenses and suddenly having to emergency replace our QB in the summer? We may have a great season, but the doubt cast upon us currently isn’t wholly unwarranted.
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Exactly right: "...you want to know why sports journalism has been nose diving in quality it’s because they have to cater to oversensitive fans..."
 
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#38
#38
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
It is a hard reset because we lost Sampson, 4 guys on the O Line, the #2 tight end, 3 of our top 4 receivers, our 3 best D linemen, our best linebacker, and our best safety in addition to Nico. Oh, and our best returning player tore his ACL in the offseason, plus our starting tight end has been hurt all offseason. Hard to have more of a reset than that.
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Nico was actually terrible and slow processing, The OL is gonna be better and they arent having trouble finding productive backs every yr


Safety play hasnt been truly good in years man. It wont be any worse than it always is.


Sry but i just dont see squirrel and the 2024 version of bru as a loss


Bru lost it unfortunately and squirrel can only run straight at 150lbs. A kid that small and fast shouod be able to catch and run but he absolutely cannot do it unless its completely vertical. Also, the #2 TE was not any good. The staff couldnt care less that hes gone.
 
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#40
#40
The Original Fade said:
The mistake Steele is making is thinking Nico was the reason for our offensive success the last 2 years. He wasn’t.
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Agreed. Also, many were anticipating a big jump for Nico in year 2 as the starter. I don't think that was going to happen. If Nico stayed, we would have eventually been in year 4 still waiting for the light switch to come on for him.
 
#42
#42
AllVol11717 said:
I’m neither here nor there on Phil Steele as a reporter, but if you want to know why sports journalism has been nose diving in quality it’s because they have to cater to oversensitive fans that get vocally upset every time they don’t predict a top 3 finish for a team.

Also trying to grade a reporter’s pre-season predictions like a test is kinda asinine. You want them to be accurate, yet you want them to put us higher after two years of mediocre passing offenses and suddenly having to emergency replace our QB in the summer? We may have a great season, but the doubt cast upon us currently isn’t wholly unwarranted.
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I think holding reporters accountable to their predictions is warranted. If they don't think there should be criticism, they should stay away from making such predictions. You can be sure they will point out when their predictions are accurate. As for our team, we have finished the last two seasons with 9 and 10 wins despite having mediocre passing offenses. What actual justification is there to assume that win total drops to 7 this year with our schedule? Are there question marks? Absolutely. There are also significant question marks with several other teams he has ranked high than us. For instance:

Georgia-Is Gunnar Stockton going to be a successful QB? He didn't look great in limited action last year. They are replacing basically their entire WR, RB and OL groups as well as a lot of the defense.

Alabama-Ty Simpson is quite possibly more of an unknown than Joey Aguilar. He had a whopping 25 pass attempts in mop up duty last year and a grand total of 50 attempts across 3 seasons. He has yet to throw a TD in college. Now, we are just supposed to assume he is an improvement over Milroe? Their returning RB production is similar to ours. WR and OL are more of a certainty than we have. They probably have fewer questions what appears to be much tougher schedules. on defense but their defense wasn't nearly as dominant as our last year, either.

Oklahoma-John Mateer was really good at WSU last year but how will that translate to the SEC and one of the toughest schedules in the country? Their OL was hot garbage last year and they didn't do much to change that. They return a lot of offensive production but that group was absolutely terrible last season. While they could certainly be better than they were last year, how do you justify them making the jump from a 6-7 team to one of the top four in the conference, particularly with the schedule they have.

LSU, A&M and Florida should be better but they have questions as well. All three seem to have fewer uncertainties than we do but they also have what appears to be much tougher schedules.
 
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#44
#44
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
We won 10 last year with 2 wins coming on the final play and another game saw us leading by only 3 with 5 minutes left. It isn’t some huge stretch to say a team losing all we lost could be a few plays worse over the course of the season.
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While that is true, we also were leading in one of our two losses with less than two minutes to go and were within a TD with less than five minutes remaining in the other loss, both on the road. Saying we could be a few plays worse is assuming everything else will remain static.
 
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#45
#45
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
I don’t see them competing for the conference, but 9-3 or so wouldn’t shock me if the QB is as advertised.
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They still have basically the same OL as last year. Also, schedule matters. This season, OU plays Michigan, Auburn, Texas, @South Carolina, Ole Miss, @ Tennessee, @ Alabama, Missouri and LSU. To go 9-3 or better, they would have to win at least 6 of those games.
 
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#49
#49
RiseToTheTop said:
Nico was actually terrible and slow processing, The OL is gonna be better and they arent having trouble finding productive backs every yr


Safety play hasnt been truly good in years man. It wont be any worse than it always is.


Sry but i just dont see squirrel and the 2024 version of bru as a loss


Bru lost it unfortunately and squirrel can only run straight at 150lbs. A kid that small and fast should be able to catch and run but he absolutely cannot do it unless its completely vertical. Also, the #2 TE was not any good. The staff couldnt care less that hes gone.
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A little too brutal but a lot of this is unfortunately true and we still eked out 10 wins, that's good coaching. We all hate it because we all wanted Nico to be the 8 million $ man but he struggled vs SEC and top 25 teams' sans Vandy and prospered versus marginal teams. We loved Bru in fact anybody that is good and name rhymes with boo the low IQ fan pours their love on them and Bru was great until the injury, and we love little fast overachievers with a catchy nickname & Squirrell hit them all he just too small stayed hurt and even if he beat his man on a straight-line route Nico missed him. Yes, we will miss Sampson, but we said we'd miss Jaylen Wright which we did but Sampson filled in with no difference. So, I expect Bishop Peyton Lewis & Starr to do the same in a dynamic Heupel Offense.
I think the D will be fine and expect McCoy to be back and we have some really good young linebackers Arion, Telander to name a few and a lot young but some experienced D-line sprinkled in.
 
#50
#50
OmahaOmaha said:
Without reading, I'm guessing Steele has UT slotted at #9 behind Txs, Uga, Ala, Uf, Lsu, Om, Ok, A&M . Maybe even behind Scar. Nico's leaving moved the Vols down 4-5 places in preseason rankings.
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And that makes no sense. Nico was the reason we lost a couple of our games and we have at least two QBs would will be better than him with our offense.
 
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