Tennessee football: Ranking every 2020 game by difficulty

7. Sept. 26 – at South Carolina Gamecocks

Moving on from the bottom tier easy teams, we go to the toss-up games. Tennessee football would like to think it has five of these, but in reality, at this moment, there are truly only two. All three of these teams, UT and its two toss-up opponents, are very similar. They are former defensive coordinators for national championship head coaches leading SEC East teams.

In fact, they are directly or indirectly part of Nick Saban’s coaching tree. Two of them were Saban’s defensive coordinators, and one of them was a defensive coordinator for a national championship head coach who was once Saban’s offensive coordinator and is now in the SEC himself, Jimbo Fisher. Jeremy Pruitt, meanwhile, was a defensive coordinator for both Saban and Fisher.

Anyway, beyond these connections, the easier one of the two is the South Carolina Gamecocks. It’s the opener, and it’s a road game, but S.C. has lots of pressure on it with Will Muschamp, Saban’s defensive coordinator back with the LSU Tigers, potentially on the hot seat. He could also be looking ahead since he has to face the Florida Gators, the school that fired, him, the next week.

By breaking the curse against him last year, the Vols appear to be on the upward trajectory while South Carolina is sliding. This matchup could put an exclamation point on that, or it could reverse the trend. Being in Columbia, S.C. at night could help the Gamecocks, but Pruitt’s team is more experienced at this point and deeper, so they should be in good shape.