Tennessee football: Ranking every 2020 game by difficulty

9. Oct. 3 – Missouri Tigers

There’s an off-chance Tennessee football’s home opener is a trap game. The Vols will host the Missouri Tigers one week after a crucial road test to open the season, one we’ll get to in a little while. This game is sandwiched between that opener and UT’s trip to Athens to face the Georgia Bulldogs. As a result, they could be in danger of overlooking these guys.

However, given the state of the program under Jeremy Pruitt, that wouldn’t make sense. Rocky Top’s goal in taking another step forward this year is to prove it can compete with the top-notch teams in the East, win or lose, while making sure it runs the table against middle of the road and lesser teams. That means putting a heavy focus on beating rebuilding teams like Mizzou.

Of course, there shouldn’t be any problem with this team anyway. Eliah Drinkwitz runs a complex offensive scheme that can be picked up pretty quickly, but it’s a bit of a transition from what the Tigers were running under Barry Odom and Derek Dooley the past two years. As a result, they’ll need a season to get used to the system, and playing UT so early won’t help.

Meanwhile, when it comes to trap games, Missouri faces Rocky Top in between matchups at the Alabama Crimson Tide and the LSU Tigers. The one bit of continuity that could help Missouri is that they retained Ryan Walters. Also, they will be back playing for a bowl game, which they weren’t able to do last year due to an NCAA ruling. As a result, they could have more motivation.