One of the hot button issues in the SEC this offseason has been whether Tennessee can break through and win its first East crown in a almost decade. On the skeptics' side, some of the arguments against have been, say, critiques that Joshua Dobbs isn't as good a passer as some people assume.
However, a lot of the dissenting opinions have been that people don't know if they can trust Butch Jones as a coach. The way in which his team gave up leads in losses to Oklahoma, Florida, and Arkansas a year ago certainly plays into that. However, OU was about ten points better than the Vols a year ago according to the year-end S&P+ figures. Putting the Sooners on the ropes spoke highly of what the team could do, even if it couldn't seal the deal. And though dropping tossups to the Gators and Razorbacks was not great, UT won tossups against Georgia and Northwestern. Winning half of your tossups is pretty much implied by what the word "tossup" means, and over the long haul, Jones has won 58% of them.
Using the early S&P+ numbers and a very simplistic method, I estimated a win total of about 9.5 for UT. I can now add some extra context here using Jones's track record. The Vols still will likely lose to Alabama and still will probably beat the eight teams they're more than a touchdown better than on the schedule. That leaves three tossups, but the Vols are better than all three of their tossup opponents. Jones has won 64% of tossups when his team has been at least a point better than his opponent in S&P+, which is roughly winning two of three.
That would suggest rounding him up from 9.5 to ten wins, and a ten-win regular season should qualify as him breaking through. The S&P+ numbers aren't infalliblethe final figures aren't even out in a single set yetbut them combined with what Jones has been doing over his nine seasons as a head coach suggest this really is the year for Tennessee to get the kind of win total the fans have been thirsting for.
Of course, it also only implies a 6-2 SEC record, and whether or not that's good enough to win the East's bid to Atlanta will probably depend on tiebreakers with Florida and/or Georgia. Even as the SEC East has lacked a true power team more often than not in the eight years since Tennessee's last SEC Championship Game appearance, the East's champion had worse than a 7-1 record just one time (2010).
