Oklahoma Game Preview

This is it. This is what we signed up for when we started following major college football. College Gameday on site. Playing a fellow blue blood in their first ever conference game. We think we have a very good team. Possibly our best team since the national championship. Saturday we should find out if we're right. Saturday night we should have a pretty good idea of just how good this team really is.

We all know the big storyline. Josh Heupel leads Oklahoma to their first national championship since 1985. Runner up for the Heisman. Begins his coaching career there, eventually working his way up to offensive coordinator and what many considered to be the heir apparent to Bob Stoops. Stoops won't let Heupel run his offense the way he want to but despite that, they still have an offense that scores in the 30's consistently. That should be enough to win a lot of games but the defensive coordinator, another Stoops brother, wasn't fielding a very good defense. Instead of letting his brother go, Stoops decided to fire the guy that won him a national championship and had been very loyal up until that point. By all accounts, this was very devastating to Josh Heupel. You can imagine what he must have been feeling at that point. Betrayal. Humiliation. Sadness. And when Stoops replaced him with Lincoln Riley, who was just a kid at the time and ran a wide open offense similar to what Heupel wanted to run, Heupel was surely feeling rage. Josh Heupel picked himself up and spent a year at Utah State before Missouri called to bring him back to the Power 5. He immediately turned that offense around and turned Drew Lock into a really good college quarterback. This was impressive enough to land him the UCF head coaching job when Scott Frost left for Nebraska. His first season they went undefeated before losing to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl. The next year they went 10-3 and had a bit of a regression as Heupel was breaking in a new quarterback in Dillon Gabriel. They finished 6-4 in the 2020 Covid year but he had several opt outs and that season had a very different vibe to it. I usually treat 2020 as a mulligan year that counted but wasn't really a true representation of reality.

We all know the rest of the story. Jeremy Pruitt went up in flames at Tennessee leading to his ouster along with Phillip Fulmer as AD. Tennessee hired UCF's Danny White as the new AD and after striking out with Brian Kelly, James Franklin and Tony Elliott twice (THANK GOD) he finally decided to bring Josh Heupel up from UCF. A lot of fans, myself included, were rightfully skeptical of the hire. But that's more of a reflection of where the program was at the time than it was a reflection of Heupel. When Pruitt's cheating came to light and it looked like the NCAA death penalty could be looming, it felt like rock bottom for the program. Not long after he was hired I began to watch film of Heupel's offense. It was probably not even a month after he was hired that I tweeted that there were a lot of similarities between him and Spurrier. People thought it was crazy at the time. It doesn't look so crazy now. And we have found out since that just like Steve Spurrier, he holds grudges. He will run up the score on teams he wants to send a message to. And now here we are. Just a couple of days before a moment that Josh Heupel has been looking forward to for about a decade now. Of all the grudges he holds, this one has to be the most personal. And it just so happens that he is bringing what appears to be a borderline elite team with him for the occasion while his old team has been struggling.

This isn't a slam dunk though. Tennessee has had a tendency to lay an egg on the road under Heupel. They no showed Missouri and Florida last year and South Carolina in 2022. Although I'm pretty convinced Frankie Jr. had our signals. Oklahoma is also a tough place to play and they have a very proud fanbase. It's rarely easy to win on the road in the SEC, especially against a decent team. And for all of Oklahoma's struggles this year, they are still a very talented team with a really good defense and they are probably in the top half of the SEC in terms of team rankings.

Football is still won in the trenches though. Oklahoma's offensive line has struggled as they've dealt with injuries and new starters. Tennessee's defensive line is probably the best in the country and goes about 10-12 deep. Unless they play much better than they have been, they are going to have a very hard time blocking the Vols. Tennessee's offensive line has been really good. The Vols are rushing for 336 yards per game and have only given up 3 sacks. Oklahoma's defensive line has been very good this year giving up only 77 rushing yards per game.

Oklahoma will likely try to take away Tennessee's run game and make Nico beat them through the air. Tennessee is just so balanced though. There's a play to beat every defense. Sometimes you just don't have the personnel to take advantage of it. Heupel has the personnel to do just about anything he needs to on offense this year though. This is where the helmet communication will be a huge advantage for Tennessee. Josh Heupel will take what Brent Venables gives him. It really is a pick your poison situation. Now the Vols still have to execute. Nico still has to play at least decent. If he get's rattled and has an off game, things could get dicey. But for Oklahoma to win this game, they are going to have to stop Tennessee several times. Tennessee has only punted twice on the season. It's not easy to stop the Vols but this will be the best defense they've faced by far.

The Sooners have attack Tennessee's secondary if they want to stay in the game. We don't really know how good the secondary is because the defensive line and linebackers have been so dominant. Jackson Arnold is a very talented quarterback and if the secondary can be exploited, he's capable of doing it. IF he has time. Oklahoma does get their best receiver back from injury with Nic Anderson. They've only ran for 159 per game and Jackson Arnold is their leading rusher. They probably won't have a ton of success against Tennessee on the ground but Tennessee has to contain Arnold. If they can get the defense off balance with him running they could make it interesting.

I get such an odd feeling when I'm trying to predict this game. Everything I know about football tells me that Tennessee should hammer 15th ranked Oklahoma. It's just not easy to get my heart to believe it. I saw a stat floating around today. The last time Tennessee beat a top 15 team on the road was at Georgia in 2006. I remember that game well. Georgia was undefeated but Tennessee was favored and thought to have the better team. Georgia jumped out to a decent lead with the help of a fired up team and a rabid crowd. Georgia was up 24-7 at one point and led 24-14 at halftime. Tennessee then exploded in the 2nd half on their way to a 51-33 win. I wouldn't be surprised if that dynamic was in play. An inspired Sooners team has a great start and the crowd is fully engaged. Then Tennessee's strengths take over and the Vols pull away.

Tennessee (-7.5) 34

Oklahoma 23

In other games...

Nebraska (-7.5) 31

Illinois 20

USC 30

Michigan (+5.5) 27

Utah (+2.5) 33

Oklahoma State 28

Florida 27

Mississippi State (+6.5) 24

Clemson 31

North Carolina State (+18.5) 24

Last week 6-0(5-1 ATS) Overall Record 14-6(11-9 ATS)

It's so much fun being relevant again in football. College football is the greatest sport on the planet and it's great to watch even when your team sucks. But it's SOOOOOOO much better when your team is relevant. Enjoy this. Don't take it for granted. It wasn't so long ago that we were going through what Florida State and Florida is right now.

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Have a great weekend and stay safe everyone. Go Vols and God Bless!