[laughing] The problem with Tennessee... and I could go any number of directions with that... [laughing] I could go a countless number of directions with that. Um, I mean, I know why they're there. Their offense leapt to 7th last year, their defense was good and then late in the year kinda fell apart, but they still finished in the top 50. They improved on the field. They bowled which was a bit of a surprise from the beginning of the year, but you know, they lost by 7, 5, 3 in the bowl game. They were close to being a lot better than 7-6.
The biggest issue is that - well we know the Josh Heupel offense by now, like Bud (Elliott) and I talk about this a lot. How some teams will play better than average against the good teams, worse than average against the bad teams. And then some will do the opposite and play better than average against the bad and worse than average against the good. Tennessee is very much the latter, or Josh Heupel's offense is very much the latter. It is built to exploit whatever advantages it has, and if they have an advantage they will score 48 points on you easily. If they don't have an advantage, it's not so sophisticated that they're gonna find their way forward against Alabama or Georgia, or teams with top 10 defenses. That makes them kind of hard to figure out.
They only play two top 10 projected teams, and they play Pitt who is projected at 13th. You know, they have Kentucky at 21st. It's not an easy schedule, but you could easily see them - like they're gonna beat Ball State, they're gonna beat Akron, I don't know about Florida, they'll be favored against LSU, favored against Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, Vanderbilt. They could easily get to 8 or 9 wins, even if they don't move the ball against Alabama very well. It's just, can you play at a top 10 level? Or a top 7 level? Or 8 or 9, or wherever they ended up? What's your ceiling when you can't really move the ball against top 10 defenses? Not that many can.
But for all their prolific points against like a Missouri and what not, they're still gonna struggle against Alabama and Georgia.