Tennessee football: Game by game predictions for Vols 2018 season

Tennessee football has reset expectations again with a new head coach in Jeremy Pruitt. Here are our predictions for every Volunteers game in 2018.

It’s finally here. No, not the start of the Tennessee football season. Our look ahead to the season is finally here, and with the games set to begin a week out, we’re ready to start with our predictions once again.

The Vols enter a new era with Jeremy Pruitt as head coach, and since he’s completely unproven, nobody knows quite what to expect. Pruitt brought highly touted staff members from all over the country, and he also went for lots of experienced transfers in the hopes of winning immediately.

Will that happen? Well, considering the fact that Tennessee football plays the two toughest teams from the SEC West while also having a tough out of conference game, Pruitt got a rough draw for a first season. So what’s the outlook like?

It’s time for us to break that down. In this post, the two All for Tennessee editors, Caleb Calhoun and Billy Williford, along with contributor Garrett Sanders, have all given their take on who will win each game on the Vols’ schedule and by how much. We all have our own predictions with the score and the record at the end of the season. And we each close out with a bowl projection.

What’s clear is that nobody knows what to expect, especially in September. The Vols could start the season 4-0 and move into the Top 25 or fall to 2-6. It’s a crazy scenario, and we don’t know what is going to play out. Much of this actually, believe it or not, rides on the first game.

So who is going to win that first game? What is it’s significance on the year? Here’s how each of us at All for Tennessee views it. It’s time to begin our game by game predictions of the 2018 Tennessee football season.