Tennessee football SEC’s most overrated team, analyst says

One sports writer is not high on the Tennessee football Volunteers.

Every few years or so over the past 12 years, national analysts across the country have tepid optimism for Tennessee football hoping that this will be the year they return to prominence or at least signal a return. Jeremy Pruitt’s upcoming season is one of those years.

However, it usually also leads to other analysts saying the Vols are being overhyped. Unfortunately for UT, those analysts have proven themselves to be more accurate in recent years. This year, Dennis Dodd is that analysts.

CBS Sports Analyst Dennis Dodd listed Tennessee football as the SEC’s most overrated team in the sports network’s official predictions for the league. He picked the Vols to finish fifth in the East, behind the Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs, Kentucky Wildcats and South Carolina Gamecocks. Here is what he wrote about Rocky Top.

"I’m just not there with the Volunteers yet. That was a fine six-game winning streak at the end of last season, but the SEC has proven you need a quarterback to win. I don’t know if Jeremy Pruitt has one. When the standard is Shawn Robinson at Missouri — that’s who Jarrett Guarantano is ranked behind by some in the SEC — then there is a problem. Even with the loss of Joe Burrow, this one of the SEC’s best collection of quarterbacks. The Vols aren’t going anywhere meaningful without inspired quarterback play."

Lack of confidence in Jarrett Guarantano is not an entirely invalid reason to be low on the Vols. After all, he was pulled in two different games last year and didn’t start half the season. However, he orchestrated the go-ahead scoring drive in every one of the Vols’ wins, and he finished the game in seven of them.

In terms of actual production, Guarantano has averaged over eight yards an attempt over the past two years while completing over 60 percent of his passes for 28 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. And he threw for over 400 yards at the Missouri Tigers last year while leading three game-winning scoring drives in their final four wins, so he hasn’t been all bad.

It’s also worth noting that this is the first year since arriving in Knoxville that Guarantano didn’t change offensive coordinators. He had Mike DeBord his redshirt season in 2016, Larry Scott in 2017, Tyson Helton in a transition to the pro-style in 2018 and Jim Chaney in 2019. Now that Chaney is back, he should be more familiar with things.

Dodd was the only analyst in these predictions who didn’t have Tennessee football finishing in the top four of the East. Jerry Palm and Ben Kercheval had them right at fourth, behind Florida, Georgia and Kentucky. Chip Patterson, Tom Fornelli and Barrett Sallee had them at third, behind Florida and Georgia.

Picks on who would win the East were split. Dodd, Sallee and Kercheval picked Florida. The other three picked Georgia. Everybody picked Alabama to win the SEC West, and all but one of them picked Alabama to win the title. Fornelli was the exception, picking Georgia to win the title.