Tennessee football 2019 recap: Ranking Vols eight wins for season

In a turnaround, Tennessee football finished Jeremy Pruitt’s second year on Rocky Top with an 8-5 record. Here is our ranking of every Volunteers victory.

After losing its first two games, both at home, to Group of Five schools, Tennessee football was in serious trouble. The Vols dug an even bigger hole when they fell to 1-4 and were also in trouble when they got to 2-5.

However, it all came back to those first two losses, as their other three were to the Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide, games everybody expected them to lose. The Georgia State Panthers and the BYU Cougars were the killers.

Still, Tennessee football managed to turn things around, closing out the year on a six-game winning streak to finish 8-5. In the process, the Vols had lots of memorable wins, and none of them were taken for granted.

As we get set to rank UT’s wins this year, it’s worth noting that almost every win down the stretch was a big one. After all, six of the Vols’ eight victories came when they were either an underdog, playing in a postseason game or facing a team that had a winning streak on them.

When you take those things into account, it’s really hard to diminish a lot of these wins. After all, getting to a bowl with a 2-5 start meant that every win was going to be a big deal, and in many ways they were.

Some wins did mean a lot more than others though. Our criteria here includes how thrilling the win was, what it meant to the season and the quality of the opponent. By the way, where the game is played is a factor into the quality of the opponent.

Taking all of that into account, it gets a little easier to break things down, but it’s still difficult. So many of these wins were big deals. Let’s show why here. This is our ranking of Tennessee football’s eight wins during the Vols’ 2019 season.