Photos: Tennessee Athletics
Cool East Tennessee fall air over warm Tennessee River water. That is how you get that thin line of fog sitting on the Tennessee River at daylight. It burns off as College GameDay fires up on the hill. Quiet morning. It will not stay that way. Two heavyweights are about to run into each other in a few hours, and Neyland is already awake.
The top media of college football is in town. Ayres Hall lawn. National cameras. Celebrities. The President of the United States. No. 1 Texas walking into Checker Neyland for a noon kick. You could spend all morning on the storylines and still have leftovers. Will Muschamp trying to slow down a Josh Heupel offense in this building. Steve Sarkisian going against a first year Jim Knowles defense. A Manning on one sideline. A true freshman five star on the other. This is the first Saturday that actually asks Tennessee who they are.
So far they have a in your face, run the ball down your throat identity. Tennessee has to run the ball in this one. There is no way around that sentence. You cannot sit in second and long and third and long in this game. I believe that part. I am not betting they can do it for sixty minutes. Not against this front. Not if the interior gets moved. If the Vols cannot lean on the run, this turns into a game they have to steal, and I do not love stealing games from the most talented team in the country.
They also have to play their cleanest football of the year. The sloppy junk that has been sitting in the background for three weeks does not travel into a game like this. Penalties. Stalled drives. The little stuff that did not matter against teams that could not punch back. Texas will punch back. Tennessee has to take this one. Nobody is handing it over.
Here is the other side of it. I am not sold on Texas on the road. I am not sold on Arch Manning on the road. Neyland when it is like this is a different animal than Austin or a noon game anywhere else in the country. I think the building gets to him some. I think he leaves some throws on the field. I think this turns into a four quarter fight. Texas has shown already that they can still win a fight. That is the problem.
I also cannot sit here and pretend I trust an 18 year old making his fourth start to go win it if the run game stalls. Faizon Brandon has been calm. He has not turned it over. He has looked the part in stretches. He has also been hidden and protected. That is not an insult. That is what the first three games were. I wish they had asked more of him before today. They did not. So the first time he is going to be asked to make consistent plays against a real defense is in this one against a unit loaded from front to back. That is a hard way to find out what you have.
Texas is oozing with talent on both sides of the ball. The roster’s price tag does not win games by itself. It does buy you elite players at every level, and it buys you a second wave when the first one gets tired. That is what I keep coming back to. Tennessee might lead this thing for a while. The building will believe it. I will believe it. Then the depth and the star power start showing up in the third and fourth quarter and the Vols have to answer with a freshman who has not been in this spot.
I think both defenses make plays. I think Tennessee hangs around because Manning is not great away from home and because a raucous crowd will not let the thing get easy for Texas. I also think a freshman mistake or the interior of the line killing a couple drives late is what ends it. The Vols stall when they need a finishing punch, and Texas is good enough to take the door when it opens.
Checkerboard Takes is 3-0 straight up this season and 0-3 against the spread. That should tell you I do not have this team figured out yet. A lot of questions get answered in this one. Nothing would surprise me and every ounce of me hopes we can run the ball or we have a freshman phenom at QB we haven’t let loose yet. Tennessee cannot hide behind the curtain anymore if that is what the first three weeks were. Time to open it up. Time to see what this team actually has.
I’ve had this as a loss all offseason and the talent Texas has won’t let me change my mind. Here is to hoping I’m dead wrong. Go Vols!
Texas 27, Tennessee 20.