National Championship winning coach makes bold prediction about Tennessee football

Tennessee football has looked like one of the best teams in the country to start the season, and as a result, has built plenty of hype around the team and redshirt freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava. 

Former Ohio State and Florida head coach Urban Meyer has bought into the hype and boldly predicted Tennessee's future this season. Meyer predicted earlier in the week that Tennessee will travel to Atlanta to face Georgia in the SEC Championship. 

That would mark Tennessee's first appearance in the conference championship game since 2007 and would likely solidify the Vols as a College Football Playoff team with a chance to secure a first-round bye in the new expanded Playoff. 

There are four teams that look better than the re

st in the Southeastern Conference: Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, so it could be any combination of those four teams in Atlanta this year, but the Vols have a chance to make the trip to Atlanta for the second time in the Josh Heupel era. 

The Vols could have gone to the SEC Championship Game in 2022 had they not lost to South Carolina in the penultimate weekend of the season. Heupel's Vols will look to repeat their 2022 success without the slip-up and book their trip to Atlanta with a much-improved defense. 

Tennessee's defense was a major talking point early in the season. They went 15 straight quarters without allowing a touchdown before Oklahoma scored two garbage-time touchdowns in the fourth quarter. 

This defense is elite, and people are noticing. Meyer continued to hype up the Vols on "The Triple Option" and its defense throughout the Vols' bye week. He mentioned that NFL scouts are saying that the Vols' defense looks like the Tennessee defense of old. 

"I've got inside information there, and I ask every week, I have an NFL guy that scouts around and helps me with some stuff, and he commented, 'It looks like Tennessee of old,' that's the respect I had for the old Tennessee outfit."

Not only has Meyer bought in on the defense, but he's also bought in on Nico and the offense. He goes on to say Nico is a Heisman contender, a future top-ten pick, and could be the guy to take Tennessee to the next level. 

"And I know Nico (Iamaleava), the quarterback, we all love him. I think he's certainly a Heisman candidate," Meyer continued. "I think he's a top-10 pick after next year. He's gotta do a couple of things a little better. They went into Norman, OK, and when you go into Norman, he had a good day, but you're at Oklahoma, and you find a way to go win that game. 

"As I said on [The Big Noon Kickoff Show], and I'm going to say it again — he's not the only show in Knoxville. They are balanced on offense; they have a good run game. They're good in the trenches. And they're very good on defense. Obviously, we're going to find out. They're jumping into the rest of the SEC coming up here... I have them No. 4, potentially the No. 3 team in the country."

Tennessee will look to continue its dominance on both sides of the ball this week when they head to Fayetteville to face Arkansas. The Razorbacks have looked much better than expected and will look to put some pressure on the Vols in a primetime night game.