Tennessee football: Vols, SEC and Top 25 predictions for Week 3 of 2018
Tennessee football’s second straight sleeper game against the UTEP Miners leads our Week 3 Volunteers, SEC and Top 25 predictions.
Two weeks are in, and Tennessee football has pretty much been par for the course on straight-up picks. We all picked them to start off 1-1, and there were no gambling picks for their game against ETSU last week. They return to FBS play, and the Vegas board, this week against the UTEP Miners.
It’s already been an eventful two weeks, but that doesn’t make determining how good these teams truly are that much easier. All the coaching changes and rebuilding jobs in the SEC this year naturally made things very difficult to project early.
However, at least we have seen enough in-game action from each team to draw our conclusions. That should make our upcoming picks more accurate. Before we get to that, here’s a recap of how we all did last week.
Week 2 recap: (Record on gambling picks are tiebreakers)
Billy Williford: 23-8 overall
11-2 straight-up, 12-6 gambling (5-4 ATS, 7-2 O/U )
Garrett Sanders: 20-11 overall
10-3 straight-up, 10-8 gambling (5-4 ATS, 5-4 O/U)
Caleb Calhoun: 20-11 overall
11-2 straight-up, 9-9 gambling (5-4 ATS, 4-5 O/U)
Record on unanimous gambling picks: 6-3
It was a decent week of picks for us overall, as none of us had a losing record on the gambling picks this week, and we all had winning records against the spread. I, Caleb Calhoun, was again the worst on gambling, this time by getting losing in the over/under. That’s where Billy Williford killed it. Garrett, meanwhile, was solid on both. Meanwhile, we were much better this week on our overall unanimous gambling picks, going 6-3.
Cumulatively, I have a ton of work to do. Billy has a clear lead with Garrett coming in second, but the two are actually tied on gambling picks. I come in third even though I’m second on straight-up picks. My money games has been awful. But with our unanimous picks this past week, we were finally able to move above .500 there. Here’s a cumulative look on where we all stand for the entire year.
Overall standings
Billy Williford: 46-21 overall
25-4 straight-up, 21-17 gambling (10-9 ATS, 11-8 O/U)
Garrett Sanders: 43-24 overall
22-7 straight-up, 21-17 gambling (12-7 ATS, 9-10 O/U)
Caleb Calhoun 39-28 overall
23-6 straight-up, 16-22 gambling (7-12 ATS, 9-10 O/U)
Overall record on unanimous gambling picks: 7-6
Now we move onto our Week 3 games. This is the final week in which the majority of SEC teams have non-conference games. Tennessee football is among those teams, and they are among six teams in the league who still will have not played a conference game after this week.
Our slate includes two games each featuring two SEC schools. Two more games feature an SEC school facing a Power Five team, one in the Top 25. And then there is still one game with an SEC school facing an FCS team. Then there are six FCS teams facing Group of Five teams. South Carolina was supposed to be a seventh against Marshall, but Hurricane Florence cancelled that one.
Add in two non-conference games each featuring two Top 25 schools, and we have 13 games to bring you overall. As always, we’ll go in order and finish with Tennessee football’s game. Our final slide will then include all the unanimous gambling picks we made to give you the best advice on where to place your bets. So here are our Vols, SEC and Top 25 predictions for Week 3 of 2018.