Tennessee Football at Florida: Five Keys to a Vols Victory

Tennessee Football heads to Gainesville to take on the Florida Gators in a prime-time SEC showdown this Saturday.

The Volunteers struggled last week against Austin Peay, a far inferior team, but are looking for a rebound this weekend on the road against one of their biggest SEC rivals. There will be 100s of factors going into this game, but let’s break down five key ones that will make or break Tennessee Football in Gainesville.

5. Cooper Mays Injury Status

One of the biggest question marks for this Volunteers offense heading into the weekend is if their star center Cooper Mays will finally be healthy enough to play. Heupel had briefly mentioned last week that they were saving Mays for this week and didn’t want him to reinjure anything prematurely against Austin Peay.

Recently, Tennessee football coach Josh Heupel said center Cooper Mays has been practicing in anticipation of playing against Florida:

"“(Mays) was with us last week and warmed up with us (before the Austin Peay game). We made a decision pretty early in the week that he probably would not play in that football game,” Heupel said Monday. “(We) anticipate him having a good week of practice here and being ready.”"

It’s clear that some of the timing has been thrown off without having Mays snapping him the ball, but if Mays does suit up, I’m hoping for the chemistry to be back and better than ever this weekend and the offense to finally start clicking.