Tennessee football: BYU winning, Georgia State losing means Vols improving

Tennessee football is improving. The Brigham Young University Cougars beating the USC Trojans and Georgia State losing prove that for the Volunteers.

You can question the legitimacy of beating an FCS team all you want. We have already documented how Tennessee football did certain things that proved the Vols were improving as a program no matter who they were playing.

However, other games over the weekend further proved the Vols are getting better. In fact, it proved they are getting significantly better to the point that their season-opening loss looks like more of a fluke than ever before.

The Georgia State Panthers, after dominating Tennessee football, struggled to put away Furman last week. Then, this past week, they got blown out by the Western Michigan Broncos. That’s not a good look for the Vols in a vacuum.

When you consider what the BYU Cougars did, though, and how much better UT looked against BYU, it provides signs of encouragement. Kalani Sitake’s program shocked the USC Trojans in overtime one week after Clay Helton’s team had a thrilling victory over the Stanford Cardinal.

That legitimizes BYU in a big way. Sure, they got blown out by the Utah Utes to open the season. But they lost 30-12 and threw two pick-sixes while spotting them their other touchdown with a third turnover. So this team is clearly a solid team.

Tennessee football was much more competitive with BYU than they were with Georgia State. After all, GSU had a 38-23 lead with 10 seconds left. They were in complete control despite being a 2-10 Sun Belt team last year.

Meanwhile, the Vols were a late Hail Mary and two missed fourth down attempts from beating BYU. If any of those plays turn out different, they win the game. The same is true with Jarrett Guarantano’s awful interception in that game. UT was one play away from winning and had a variety of plays they could have chosen from to change.

But despite looking so much better against them, after this weekend, nobody would suggest that the Panthers are better than the Cougars. So already, it was clear that UT was improving last week. That means it’s only logical to assume their 45-0 shutout over the Chattanooga Mocs was a legitimate display of improvement rather than cashing in on a bad FCS team.

We’ll know more about that going forward, but maybe things truly are getting better under Jeremy Pruitt. Even if they don’t beat the Florida Gators Saturday, the Vols are slowly working out a lot of kinks. BYU’s win over USC was enough to prove that they are decent.