The Tennessee Volunteers are right where they were supposed to be.
Tennessee is entering the second open date of its 2025 football season ranked No. 23 in the Associated Press poll, which is slightly up from its preseason projection of No. 24. The Vols have won all six of their games against unranked foes and have lost all three of their contests against the ranked trio of No. 4 Alabama, No. 5 Georgia and No. 11 Oklahoma.
That, my friends, is the definition of a No. 23 team.
Rewind to April’s Orange & White spring game, when starting quarterback Nico Iamaleavala abruptly left for UCLA and put Tennessee in scramble mode for a new quarterback, and a No. 23 ranking does not seem so bad. Nor does it seem so shabby when the expected strength of the roster, the cornerback tandem of preseason All-American Jermod McCoy and Rickey Gibson III, never came to fruition due to injuries.
Make no mistake, the 12-team College Football Playoff should be an annual goal for Tennessee, but the same could be said for other Southeastern Conference programs that possess multiple AP national championships, with that list consisting of Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma and Texas. That list doesn’t even include Ole Miss and Texas A&M, which appear to have their respective acts together on the coaching front and the name, image and likeness front, or even Missouri and Vanderbilt, which have been ranked for multiple weeks.
“We’ve just got to keep fighting,” Tennessee graduate transfer quarterback Joey Aguilar said after Saturday night’s 33-27 home loss to Oklahoma. “We’re blessed to have three more games, and we’ve just got to take it week by week. College football is crazy, but our next focus is our next opponent.”
Aguilar has been way better than expected, with his average of 304.1 passing yards a game ranking fourth nationally. Yet he now has been part of two disastrous plays — Alabama’s 99-yard interception return and Oklahoma’s 71-yard fumble return (which was largely the result of a missed block by freshman right tackle David Sanders Jr.).
There have been plenty of accomplishments and disappointments for the Vols so far in Josh Heupel’s fifth season, which was pretty much the expectation before things kicked off Labor Day weekend.
Some Tennessee tidbits: The Vols through nine games rank third nationally in scoring offense (43.6 points per game) and fourth in total offense (504.1 yards per contest). … Saturday night marked Neyland Stadium’s 25th straight sellout. … The Vols dropped to 10-2 under Heupel in Neyland games at night, with the first loss having come against Ole Miss in 2021. … Redshirt sophomore defensive end Tyree Weathersby collected the first sack of his college career.
Auburn became the fourth SEC program this season to fire its head coach, parting ways Sunday with Hugh Freeze.
Freeze was 15-19 with the Tigers, including a disastrous 6-16 in league games. He repeatedly said this season that Auburn was “so close” to breaking through, but the “so close” line rang hollow after Saturday night’s 10-3 home loss to Kentucky, which snapped its 10-game SEC losing streak and defeated the Tigers for just the second time in the last 50 seasons.
“Offensively, there are zero excuses for how poorly we’re playing at times,” said Freeze, whose brief Auburn legacy will be remembered for thinking he could develop an upper-echelon offense with a quarterback contingent of Payton Thorne, Robby Ashford, Hank Brown, Jackson Arnold and Ashton Daniels.
Thorne was the best of that bunch, because this season’s offense is ranked 110th nationally and averaging 100 yards fewer than last year’s offense.
Auburn is 26-33 since inexplicably firing Gus Malzahn — who won the SEC once, the SEC West twice and was 3-5 against Alabama’s Nick Saban — during a pandemic without having his successor lined up. Tigers fans are going through the most torturous stretch of their lifetimes, but they remain fiercely loyal.
All 20 of Auburn’s Freeze-coached games at Jordan-Hare Stadium were sellouts, with the Tigers going 9-11 in those contests. Their victories were over Texas A&M, which led to an embarrassing field-storming, Mississippi State, UMass, Samford, Alabama A&M, New Mexico, Louisiana-Monroe, Ball State and South Alabama.
“This community and fan base deserves a lot more,” Daniels said.
Three FBS teams have not allowed more than 24 points in any game this season: No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Indiana and 4-5 Auburn.
“That’s the hardest thing, and I’ve never quite experienced this before,” Freeze said. “It’s very frustrating for one unit to play so well and not get results.”
The triumph at Auburn was just the second league win in the past two seasons for Kentucky, which upset Ole Miss 20-17 in Oxford last year.
“I know I want to win one at home for our fans, believe me,” Wildcats coach Mark Stoops said, “but for the team when you’re under a lot of heat and go on the road in a hostile environment and go through that, there’s something fun about that, too.”
Georgia improved to 7-1 overall and to 5-1 in SEC action with Saturday’s 24-20 topping of Florida in Jacksonville.
The Bulldogs have faced fourth-quarter deficits this season in victories over Tennessee, Ole Miss and the Gators, and they rallied from an early 10-0 hole to defeat Auburn 20-10.
“I don’t believe in playing with fire,” Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said. “If I could just write the script and say, ‘Let’s go up by 14. Let’s go up by 21,’ but I don’t write the scripts. The script kind of plays out, and I know that our kids are not uncomfortable. They don’t get chained to a scoreboard. There are people who play chained to a scoreboard, and our guys are free of that.
“They play to the team and keep chopping and chopping to where good things will happen. I do think our guys are well-conditioned, and I do think our guys believe in winning in the fourth.”
The Bulldogs are 8-2 against Florida under Smart and 8-1 in the past nine meetings.
Ole Miss has swept South Carolina the past two seasons by the combined count of 57-17, with Lane Kiffin’s Rebels keeping their stout playoff hopes alive with Saturday night’s 30-14 win in Oxford.
“If you’re plus-208 in rushing at 258 to 50, and if you get six sacks and give up none, that’s a really good job by both lines of scrimmage,” Kiffin said. “We wanted to dominate the line of scrimmage and not leave it up to the skill people, and I thought we did that.”
Shane Beamer’s Gamecocks, who began this season ranked No. 13, dropped to 3-6 overall and to 1-6 in SEC games, so they must win out to avoid missing out on a bowl invitation.
“We’ve got a good group of seniors who wanted their final year to be better than it has been,” Beamer said. “I hurt for them, and there are a lot of guys in that locker room who are hurting right now and voicing that.”
Texas ambushed Vanderbilt with the game’s first 17 points, built a 34-10 lead and held on for a 34-31 triumph.
Longhorns redshirt sophomore quarterback Arch Manning continued his late-season surge by completing 25 of 33 passes for 328 yards and three touchdowns. Texas was 7-of-11 on third-down conversions and played turnover-free in its first game in Austin since a 55-0 blanking of Sam Houston on Sept. 20.
“It’s been a long month, but I think we’ve all grown closer together,” Manning said. “I think that has helped us in the long run. We just need to press forward, because this month of November is going to be no joke.”
Said Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian of Manning’s afternoon: “This was the best protection he’s gotten all year.”
Commodores coach Clark Lea appreciated the fight in his team but doesn’t want a repeat performance.
“I despise the way we started that game,” Lea said. “I think Texas football played harder than Vanderbilt football today, and this is the feeling of one team wanting it more than the other. Our goals are still all out in front of us, but I told our team that we can’t play another game like we played today.
“That’s not OK.”
Mississippi State broke its 16-game league losing streak with a 38-35 win at Arkansas.
The Bulldogs lost all eight of their SEC games last year by double digits but took Tennessee and Texas into overtime earlier this season before falling.
“It feels good to get a win,” second-year head coach Jeff Lebby said, “and I’ve continued to focus on this football team and this season and who we are in the moment and not comparing ourselves to any teams in the past. Who are we today, and what gives us the best opportunity to win every single Saturday? That has been our focus.
“I guess the streak will not be talked about anymore, which I do love.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.