Tennessee football at Georgia: Keys to the game for Vols and Dawgs

7. Crowd’s effect on Vols at Sanford Stadium

This is Tennessee football’s first road game. Now, there are plenty of Vols who have experience playing on the road. The entire front seven defensively is made up of returning starters, some of whom have made noise in the past against the Georgia Bulldogs.

However, Jeremy Pruitt is using lots of newcomers, including freshmen at cornerback and junior college transfers at tight end and on the offensive line. He’s also sprinkling in other new guys all over the field.

But what makes this even more difficult is the fact that the Vols are learning brand new systems on both sides of the ball. So how is the offense, which has already seen far too many growing pains through the first four games of the year, going to be able to handle the crowd noise of an SEC team?

This is going to be one of the most difficult things for Jeremy Pruitt on Saturday. It’s also arguably the biggest hurdle. I just don’t know how an offense that has struggled with consistency as it is can all of a sudden turn it on in such a rough SEC environment.

If Tennessee can somehow deal with the crowd and achieve the biggest miracle of the game, they’re one step closer to having a snowball’s chance in this game. But that’s going to be an insanely tall order.