Tennessee football vs. Mississippi State: 10 keys for Vols and Bulldogs

9. Advantage the bye week gives Mississippi State

We saw last week how Tennessee football was able to use its bye week to get off to a fast start and actually take the lead against the Georgia Bulldogs, who could very well be the most talented team in the nation. Byes give programs huge advantages, and while UGA also had a bye, Jeremy Pruitt did a better job trying to take advantage of it.

This week, the same will be true for Joe Moorhead. He and Bob Shoop are both known as schematic geniuses, so a bye week will likely serve them extremely well to get ready for UT. To be fair, his team lost coming off their bye last year, but it was against the LSU Tigers. And they did only lose 19-3, so the defense showed something.

On Saturday, Moorhead will have had two weeks to figure out his quarterback situation and draw up an offensive plan for a defense that has had its issues. Shoop will not have had the same advantage since UT made a quarterback switch, but there are plenty of things he still likely had time to figure out, and that should work out to his advantage.

How big of an advantage it is remains to be seen. But remember, last year, Pruitt had a really bad team and was still able to use the bye week to his advantage when his guys faced the Auburn Tigers on the road at noon. And they pulled off a gigantic upset that made fans everywhere believe in the guy.