Tennessee football vs. Vanderbilt: 10 keys for Vols and Commodores

7. Who has the worse red zone offense?

It’s been a story for both teams all year, and we even made this a key last week. Tennessee football’s red zone offense is a big reason they are 6-5 and not 7-3. Early in the year, whenever they got past the 50, their drives would stall. They either had to settle for field goals or Jeremy Pruitt would go for it.

UT being two-of-11 on those fourth downs is why they have a red zone offense outside of the top 100. The Vols have only converted on 77.5 percent of their trips to the red zone, which is a horrible number. If they have those issues again, they could certainly end up suffering another major upset loss like they did at the beginning of the season.

However, on the other side, the Vols are lucky to be facing another team with a bad red zone offense. This is their third straight game against a team with such a red zone offense outside of the top 100 and their fourth in five games. The Vanderbilt Commodores convert on only 70 percent of their trips to the red zone, which is No. 124 in the nation.

By the way, both teams have solid red zone defenses, keeping teams from scoring roughly 20 percent of the time each. That means red zone drives will have little impact on this game. The team that actually is able to keep performing well inside the red zone is the one that will have the advantage, and that’s a major factor.