IFTIT: Tennessee Vols vs. Vanderbilt Commodores Football Preview 2025
Will it be Anchor Down or Rocky Top in the 120th annual meeting?
Recently
Vanderbilt (#14 CFP, 9-2, 5-2 SEC) destroyed Kentucky 45-17 on senior day at Dudley Field. Diego Pavia racked up 484 yards passing, a career high and a program record.
Tennessee (#19 CFP, 8-3, 4-3 SEC) went to Florida and beat the Gators 31-11. It was UT’s first win in the Swamp since 2003 and only the sixth win in the Swamp for the Vols ever. Somehow, for some Big Orange fans it wasn’t enough. And I get it. I wanted to boat race those dudes out of their own stadium too. They’ve cause Vol fans a lot of pain over the years, especially there, and it was time they paid for it. Time for us to take our pound of Gator flesh.
But imagine the alternate reality, where Tennessee presses the issue and catastrophe happens. What if Florida gets a defensive score right there before half? Don’t pretend it couldn’t happen—we’ve already seen it happen this season. Would it be worth giving the Gators momentum in that spot? They go to half 28-7, then score coming out of the break to make it 28-14, and it’s a whole other game.
Or what if Joey Aguilar, Chris Brazzell, or Braylon Staley had been injured running up the score? We’d all be yelling about how stupid it was to keep pushing for points while the game was well in hand.
No, the game played out perfectly. Have you ever seen how hunters harvest an alligator? It’s a bang stick shot to the head, then you pull it in the boat. You don’t have to keep shooting it once it’s dead. It’s fitting that on UT’s last trip to the Swamp for a while (thank heavens), the Vols would get the kill shot early, then get the boat home as soon as possible.
Previously on Vols vs. Dores
If I had a nickel for every time that Tennessee-Vanderbilt was played with a playoff spot on the line for at least one of the teams, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s pretty weird that it happened twice, in consecutive years, and with the opposite team being the one chasing a bid each time.
Last season, it was Tennessee sitting with two losses needing a win in Nashville to clinch their spot in the dance. And at first, it looked doubtful, with Vandy running the opening kickoff back for a TD and then taking advantage of a UT turnover to hold a 17-7 lead at the end of the first quarter. From there it was all Vols though, as Tennessee scored the next 29 points in a 36-23 win powered by 178 yards on the ground by Dylan Sampson and 118 receiving yards from Donte Thornton, career-high marks for each man.
Tennessee leads the all-time series 81-32-5, with six straight wins dating back to 2019. Before the current streak though, UT had lost five out of seven to Vandy between 2012 and 2018 (Butch Jones had a losing record to the Dores, which, yeah of course he did).
And this is the time of year that I get to post my favorite stat, which is: since 1928, Tennessee has shut out Vandy more times than Vandy has beaten UT, by a 3:1 margin (Tennessee: 23 shutouts, Vandy: 14 wins).
Five Factor Preview
It likely won’t be a shutout this year, however, as Vandy’s offense has been the strength of the team for reasons we’ll get into below. First though, according to the JAR rating, this game is a toss-up—it’s about as toss-up as a game can be, with UT having a 0.1% edge in win probability.
Last week I pointed out that JAR has its flaws, but that it has pretty well nailed Tennessee’s season. JAR had UT right around a 80% probability to beat Florida, and that played out according to plan. So far this year, JAR has identified the Georgia, Mississippi State, and Oklahoma games as toss-ups, and two of them went to OT with the other being a one-score game. As there are no glaring spots where one team has a definite edge, expect this game Saturday to be a nail-biter as well. UT is 1-2 in toss up games this year, so the law of averages says they should win this one, right?
Personnel & Matchup
The most important name you won’t see on the chart above is Vandy offensive consultant Jerry Kill. You might remember Kill as the head coach at Minnesota, who retired suddenly in 2015 (after winning Big Ten Coach of the Year honors in 2014) citing health concerns, including multiple seizures. In the following years Kill resurfaced in a few different assistant and administrative roles before becoming the HC at New Mexico State for the 2022 and ‘23 seasons.
From there Kill stepped down at NMSU to become the “chief consultant to the head coach and senior offensive advisor” for Vandy. That’s the kind of move typically reserved for coaches in disgrace—get fired and end up at the Nick Saban School for Coaches Who Can’t Coach Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too. But Kill was 10-5 in 2023 at NMSU, then skips out to be Clark Lea’s special offense buddy.
And Kill had a pretty stacked offense with the Aggies. UT RB Star Thomas, VU QB Diego Pavia, and VU TE Eli Stowers were all on Kill’s offense in Las Cruces. Imagine playing that New Mexico State team in Neyland a couple of weeks ago with that trio on the other side. That’s probably a G5 playoff contender.
It’s Pavia of course who is the straw that stirs the drink on West End. Pavia spent most of the offseason letting his mouth write checks, and for the most of the season his butt has been able to cash them. I loathe to admit it, but Pavia has made himself a legitimate Heisman contender, putting up video game numbers in multiple games this season while placing third nationally in total offense and third in the SEC in passing yards/game. Oh, and Pavia can run too. And the answer is a lot more complicated than “just put a spy on him”, as spying the QB comes at a pretty big cost to the defense since you lose the natural +1 advantage you have by not committing one defender full-time to the QB—but that’s a whole essay for another time.
A ton of Pavia’s success comes from running Jerry Kill’s offense—which is what Vandy runs despite Kill being a “consultant” and not the OC. As an opposing fan, the Kill offense is frustrating to watch your team defend. They use a ton of motion and shifts to try and make the defense align improperly, and it often works. Think of it this way: Tennessee’s offense tries to make the defense wrong after the snap. If the DB plays off the receiver, then the receiver shortens up his route and catches the ball in front of the defender. If the DB tries to play tight coverage, then the WR runs by him for a deep ball.
Instead, Vandy’s offense tries to make the defense wrong pre-snap. VU will let you line up, then shift so that you’re no longer aligned to their strength. They’ll overload one side to influence the defense’s position, then break a long run to the weak side. They motion on almost every play to see if you’re playing man or zone, then throw to the route that will beat your declared coverage. It’s smart, but it’s maddening to defend. And as an opposing fan you will be screaming how’d he get that wide open on Saturday when the answer is there was probably nothing that could’ve been done to prevent the man from getting that wide open in the first place.
Another huge advantage Vandy has is TE Eli Stowers, one of the nation’s top tight ends and another wrinkle the Kill offense can throw at you. While trying to keep track of all the other things VU’s trying to do offensively the TE can get lost in the shuffle, and Stowers is too good to lose track of. Think about how good TE teams like UGA have caused problems for Tennessee’s defense in the past, and you can imagine how frustrating containing Vandy will be on Saturday.
So what’s the answer to Vandy’s potent offense? Well it turns out there will be a pretty good QB in orange as well. Can you imagine back in August hearing that Diego Pavia vs. Joey Aguilar would be the premier QB matchup in the final week of the regular season? But here we are. And while Aguilar isn’t quite the running threat Pavia is and thus lags behind the VU QB in total offense, Joey does throw for nearly 50 yards a game more than Pavia does in SEC play alone.
The question might come down to which group of skill players would you rather have? Chris Brazzell, Braylon Staley, and Mike Matthews all statistically rank ahead of Vandy’s leading receiver in Stowers, and you have to look a good bit past Stowers to find VU WRs Junior Sherrill and Tre Richardson. Plus you have both Desean Bishop and Star Thomas out-pacing Vandy RB Sedrick Alexander (it’s been Pavia, and not Alexander, who has led Vandy’s rushing attack this year).
Prediction
You need to wrap your head around a few things before kickoff Saturday:
Vandy’s offense, and especially Pavia & Stowers, is going to get theirs. They will make some big plays and they will likely score some points.
The way Vandy’s offense operates will make you mad. The best defense the Dores have played this year is Alabama, and VU went up 14-7 early on some plays that made Bama’s defense look goofy.
This game is legitimately a toss-up. If Tennessee loses, it’s not because “we suck this year” and it doesn’t mean UT needs to fire everyone.
Since the game is a toss-up, how do we pick a winner? I have a feeling that Maxim #1 might come into play: the team that makes the fewest mistakes will win. But turnovers aren’t something you can predict. Go back and look at R Mason Thomas’ fumble return for Oklahoma against Tennessee a few weeks ago. The ball bounces up into his hands perfectly, he barely has to break stride on the way to the endzone. You can’t predict that kind of bounce, and it ends up being the difference in the game. Also UT is +3 on turnover this season, Vandy is +4. Practically dead-even.
So what factor might come into play next? Hopefully it will be the Neyland Effect. Tennessee has lost 3 home games in the last 4 years. Two of them were to UGA. When asked how his team plays so well in hostile environments, Kirby Smart has talked about how they simplify their game plans on the road. They use less shifting, less motion, fewer micro-adjustments that could go awry if the offense can’t communicate cleanly. Vandy’s whole operation is based on micro-adjustments. Can the Vols and the home crowd force enough errors in the Vandy operation to make those adjustments glitch? Here’s hoping so. Vols 41, Vandy 33.