Tennessee football: Ranking every game on Vols 2019 schedule by difficulty

12. Chattanooga Mocs

Game Three

Saturday, Sept. 14; Neyland Stadium; Knoxville, Tenn.

The one FCS school on a schedule should always be the easiest team for Tennessee football, and that’s the case heading into 2019. Coming off a 6-5 season, the Chattanooga Mocs are even mediocre by FCS standards.

There have been previous meetings between the Vols and Mocs. Most recently, they faced in 2014, and Butch Jones’s team won that game 45-10 in dominating fashion. Before that, though, the two actually had a rivalry back in the early years of college ball, when they both played in the Southern Conference.

Those games were a long time ago. Now, even as Jeremy Pruitt tries to resurrect this program from the ground, Chattanooga should be the easiest victory on Rocky Top. It shouldn’t be close after the first quarter.

What also helps is that this is early enough in the season for the Vols to likely be at mostly full strength, so they should be able to have enough firepower to put this game out of reach early. They’ll be looking to get their backups in by the second quarter.

Ever since they began regularly playing SEC schools in 2010, UT has never failed to beat them by at least 26 points. And they have won all but one of those games by at least 35 points. So one tradition this program still has is dominating schools from lower levels, and that shouldn’t change with Chattanooga. This is easily the most sure win on the schedule.