Tennessee football: Could 2019 Vols upset Georgia as ESPN suggests?

Tennessee football is getting love from ESPN as Jeremy Pruitt enters his second year. The 2019 Volunteers are named a team for the UGA Dawgs to worry about.

Well who saw this coming? If you take a stroll through Rocky Top, conventional wisdom is that ESPN hates Tennessee football. They’re still blamed, fairly or unfairly, for Peyton Manning losing the Heisman Trophy to Charles Woodson over 20 years ago.

However, the Vols can sometimes get some love from the network, and this is one of those times where that’s the case. On Monday, ESPN.com had an article up about the one game every top 25 team should be on upset alert for when the season arrives.

For the Georgia Bulldogs, Tennessee football was on the list. Now, the reasoning was more about UGA feeling itself. Assuming the Dawgs get past the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, they would have a bye after that and be undefeated. Coming out of that bye would be their game at the Vols. Overconfidence and UT’s youthful motivation were listed as factors.

However, those would seem pretty weak. Couldn’t that be a factor whenever Georgia, or any elite team for that matter, plays an unranked team? How would overconfidence and motivation on the other end make this game more different than pretty much every game ever?

So now we have to question if ESPN is onto something. And, well, quite honestly, they just might be. Let’s get this out of the way, first. Tennessee football is not better than Georgia, and it would be a shocker for them to pull off the upset.

But they did beat the Auburn Tigers on the road last year. Also, they didn’t look horrible against the Dawgs. Sure, the Vols lost 38-12. But remember that one of Georgia’s touchdown was off a fumble they had but luckily recovered and then took into the end zone.

Another was off a Jeremy Banks fumble in the second half. Remember, Darrell Taylor forced three fumbles in that game, though, and the Vols were just unlucky enough to recover none of them. So two different bounces could have changed everything.

Simply put, a couple of plays could have made that game different. This year, the game is in Knoxville, which is a much bigger advantage. And the Vols, while not expected to be great, are expected to be significantly better. There’s a reason that ESPN themselves had this team ranked No. 15 in its preliminary 2019 FPI rankings back in February.

On top of having an improved team and having the game at home after showing decent flashes in last year’s game, though, the biggest thing ESPN could be on to with this one is something they didn’t mention. And that’s Jim Chaney.

Look, Chaney is considered a very good offensive coordinator and the perfect hire for the Vols, but he’s not considered an outright genius. However, he understands enough that after three years as the Georgia Bulldogs’ offensive coordinator and so much of their young talent back, he should be able to have an advantage.

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There’s even more returning talent on defense, whom Chaney went against everyday in practice last year. This game is early enough in the year that Chaney could still know some things about that side of the ball, and if Jarrett Guarantano and the offensive line take a step forward, he may have enough talent around him to do some surprising things.

Jeremy Pruitt obviously was a coordinator with the Georgia Bulldogs too, but that was too many years ago. He and Kirby Smart have their own understanding of each other that won’t be a factor. Chaney, however, could be a huge factor.

As a result, with all of this, yes, it’s fair to give Tennessee football even the slightest chance to upset Georgia. Now, it still likely won’t happen. But upsets do happen. And after beating Auburn last year on the road, you could see the Vols stepping their game up just enough to beat the Dawgs in 2019. ESPN just might be onto something.