Tennessee football: 5 reasonable goals for Vols 2018 season

4. Don’t lose more than two games by more than one score

If you go back and look at many successful first-year head coaches who had rebuilding seasons, they weren’t always great their first season. But they were usually always competitive in games. The best example of this is Nick Saban with the Alabama Crimson Tide back in 2007.

Although the situations are different from there and now since Saban already had a track record and instant credibility, allowing him to recruit easily, the talent base of his first team is similar to Jeremy Pruitt’s. The only real difference, outside of the injuries, is that Pruitt is installing completely new philosophies on offense and defense, while Saban just tweaked them.

Still, what stood out about that 7-6 Alabama team is that they didn’t lose any game by more than one score. Sure, they suffered bad upsets to teams like Louisiana Monroe down the stretch. But they were in every game, even losing to the eventual national champion LSU Tigers by only one touchdown. That was impressive.

In fact, things could have gone better if not for the distraction from the textbook scandal. Anyway, we’re not going to ask this year’s Tennessee football team to keep every game within one score. But it’s reasonable for them to be in almost every game this year.

Outside of that brutal three-game stretch against the Auburn Tigers, Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama themselves, the Vols could be in every game. This makes for another reasonable goal on Rocky Top in 2018.

If Pruitt is a good coach, he can find a way to get these guys to play above their heads in some of these games. That includes during that stretch. So they should be able to give some of the teams that beat them a scare.