Tennessee football: 5 reasons Vols will beat the Florida Gators

4. The Vols’ offense is undergoing an easier transition.

Tennessee football is converting from that disastrous Butch Jones spread offense to the pro-style. They’ve had three games to work on it, and you could definitely see parts of it starting to gel in the last two games. There were even flashes against the West Virginia Mountaineers despite an offensive line that had barely played together.

The Florida Gators, meanwhile, are doing the opposite transition. They are switching from a pro-style to a spread offense. Dan Mullen is definitely one of the coaches who knows how to execute the spread beautifully, unlike Jones. But history shows that it takes a team at least a year to get used to running it.

As a result, although both teams have an equal number of penalties through two games, Florida is going to be much more prone to offensive penalties on Saturday. That’s the nature of the spread offense when you’re not used to running it. And those issues are magnified when you’re playing on the road.

Tennessee’s mistakes, meanwhile, are skewed because they had one bad game last week against the UTEP Miners. And Jeremy Pruitt admitted that they had a bad week of practice, which in all likelihood was due to that week being sandwiched in between two bad games. So don’t expect them to have those issues again on Saturday.

Both teams figure to struggle on defense by switching to the 3-4. That’s always a tough transition. And it’s why this will be an ugly game overall. But the Vols are better-equipped to be more adjusted to their offense than the Gators are. That’s a huge advantage for them.