All for Tennessee
Fansided

Tennessee football: Five reasonable goals for 2022

By Caleb Calhoun

Smokey runs the end zone after a touchdown during the Tennessee Volunteers' game against Alabama in Neyland Stadium on Saturday, October 20, 2018.Kns Utvsbamafootball Bp Jpg
Smokey runs the end zone after a touchdown during the Tennessee Volunteers' game against Alabama in Neyland Stadium on Saturday, October 20, 2018.Kns Utvsbamafootball Bp Jpg /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
2 of 5
Next
The Tennessee football team runs through the T during a NCAA football game against Tennessee Tech at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tenn. on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021.Kns Tennessee Tenn Tech Football
The Tennessee football team runs through the T during a NCAA football game against Tennessee Tech at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tenn. on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021.Kns Tennessee Tenn Tech Football /

4. Win every non-Power Five game plus Vanderbilt and Missouri

Every year, even in their worst years, there are circled games for Tennessee football. If the Vols are going to accomplish anything they want to accomplish this year, they have to win those games. The circled games, to be fair, are almost identical as they were last year in terms of the three non-Power Five games and the Vanderbilt Commodores.

Although Vandy is better this year, the Vols should still dominate them. Meanwhile, they shouldn’t lose to the Ball State Cardinals or the Akron Zips, and obviously, they should always beat their FCS foe, the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles. That puts four automatic wins on the table right there.

Next up is a bit of a wildcard, but it should be a circled game. Last year, the Vols’ breakout game was a 62-24 win over the Missouri Tigers. In their second year under Eli Drinkwitz, Mizzou went 6-7. This year, Mizzou has to travel to Knoxville, and given what they did last year, the Vols have to be confident in their chances of dominating them.

As a result, beating Mizzou plus those other four teams is part of a packaged goal. The Vols have lost such circled games before. Remember their first two games of 2019? That was also in their head coach’s second season. They can’t do that again.

Home/Vols Football