It's Bowl Time in Tennessee: Vols vs. Illinois Fighting Illini Preview 2025
You can't spell Music City Bowl without MY UT SLIC BOI
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Tennessee (#23, 8-4, 4-4 SEC) finished a strange season on a sour note, falling to Vanderbilt 29-45 on Senior Day in Neyland. I say a strange season for lack of a better description. This is probably best left for a full-season postmortem later on, but on the morning of the Orange & White game last spring, when you woke up to find Tennessee’s five-star, $8-million dollar QB was gone, if I could promise you that eight wins would be the floor for Tennessee in 2025, you’d probably be ok with that. Especially if I told you one of those wins would be in the Swamp. Oh, and they’d be breaking in new personnel all over the offense while the defense would be out one All-American corner and another CB of AA or All-SEC caliber.
At the same time, it felt oddly like UT underachieved this year. A made FG at the end of regulation against the eventual SEC champs would’ve changed the whole tenor of the season. Just don’t give up a strip-sack-TD against Oklahoma and you probably win that game too. This UT squad held together with duct tape and hope was a couple of plays away from being a CFP contender once again. But they didn’t quite ascend to that level, and the whole season felt a little lacking as a result.
Unlike Tennessee, Illinois (RV, 8-4, 5-4 Big 10) finished the 2025 regular season with a win against their in-state rival nerd school, beating Northwestern 20-13. Like Tennessee, Illinois also has some losses against CFP heavyweights; for them it was Ohio State and Indiana. But the Illini have lost some questionable ones too, being routed by Washington 42-25 and dropping a head-scratcher against Wisconsin 27-10.
This is the first time Illinois has posted back-to-back eight win seasons since 1989-90. A win in Nashville would give the Illini the most wins over a two-year span in program history with 19. (By comparison, a win in Nashville would give UT 19 wins over a two-year span for the first time since… last year). Bret Bielema is the first coach in Illinois history to win 8+ games three times, and three 8-win seasons in a span of four years is a first for Illinois since winning 8+ each year from 1901-04.
Previously on Vols vs. Illini
This will be the first meeting between the schools in football.
Tennessee and Illinois have played basketball each of the last three seasons, with Tennessee winning in Knoxville and Champaign over the last two years and the Illini winning in Nashville a few weeks ago.
Tennessee has played Big 10 teams three times in the postseason under Josh Heupel, losing to Purdue in overtime at the 2021 Music City Bowl and at eventual national champion Ohio State in last year’s CFP. UT beat Big 10 Iowa in the 2023 Citrus Bowl. Illinois’ Bret Beilema is 1-1 against SEC teams in bowl games at Illinois, losing to Mississippi State in the 2023 Reliaquest Bowl and beating South Carolina in last year’s Citrus Bowl.
Five Factor Preview
When I created the JAR rating last offseason, it was not with the goal of coddling my orange-tinted biases. But here we are—with JAR still rating the Vols at #16 nationally. Best 8-4 team in America? Hang the banner.
In reality though, JAR has done a really good job of predicting Tennessee games this season. The worst call it’s made was pinning the Vandy game as a toss-up. For this game, JAR has the same level of confidence in a Vol win that it had in the Syracuse game to kick off the year. I personally have some reservations about that that we’ll get into, but JAR’s opinion is clearly pro-UT.
Matchup & Personnel
Addition for the last edition of the matchup sheet: I’ve faded players who have opted-out of the bowl game (as of press time).
For Tennessee’s defense, that’s LB Arion Carter (though EDGE Joshua Josephs and CB Colton Hood have been rumored as potential opt-outs too).
Unfortunate, as I’d loved to have seen how Carter played in new DC Jim Knowles’ defense next year, but expect to see heavy doses of Edwin Spillman and Jadon Perlotte—which is a good thing too.
Faded for the Illini is All-Big 10 LT JC Davis, which, if I’m Joshua Josephs and I’m thinking about the draft, I might just play in this game and try to wreak literal havoc on whoever the next man up at OT for Illinois is.
QB Luke Altmyer does plan to play his final game for the Illini and projects as a mid-round Draft pick. Altmyer draws comparisons to NFL journeyman Gardner Minshew, in that his best qualities as a QB are from the neck up—but he’s smart enough to overcome any physical limitations to beat you. Altmyer is the lone top-200 rated player in Illinois’ two-deep.
Speaking of a talent gap, let’s talk about Illinois HC Bret Bielema’s coach effect. Bielema is a whopping +30 in career coach effect—meaning he’s won a ton of games where he had the less talented roster (as is the case for this game). That’s slightly skewed by the fact that Bielema almost always has the less talented squad—his stint at Arkansas was the only time in his career that he had teams ranked in the top-25 talent-wise, and those just barely.
In fact, the talent level at Illinois has only marginally improved over the course of Bielema’s time in Champaign-Urbana. Five years in and the Illini are still statistically less talented than teams like Maryland, Rutgers, Purdue, and Northwestern. But the Illini are regularly beating those teams under Bielema. Ironically, Illinois is more talented than #1 Indiana; which calls into doubt the validity of these recruiting rankings to begin with. But talent level has a very strong correlation to winning—you could hit around 80% for the season picking games straight up using nothing but talent rating. Bielema’s teams buck that trend and have for most of his career.
Defensively, Illinois S Matthew Bailey and OLB/EDGE Gabe Jacas have declared for the draft and will not play in the bowl game.
Jacas was All-Big 10 and led the conference in sacks with 11.
For Tennessee, WR Chris Brazzell has declared for the draft and will sit out. Radarious Jackson saw the most action as UT’s 4th WR so expect to see a good bit of him and/or a good bit of two-TE sets (I think you’ll see both).
Last game for Joey Aguilar? Probably. Last game for Lance Heard? Possibly. It will be interesting to see what personnel decisions are made in this game, as they could foreshadow next year’s roster too.
Prediction
The roster unknowns make picking a game like this difficult. Not only what players may or may not opt out between now and kickoff, but also where the motivation level is for each player and coach at this point of the year. Who might be checked out mentally? Who might be driven to show out for next year’s NIL deal? What coaches know they’re not being retained and are just going through the motions? Which ones are putting in double time, angling for a promotion? These are all unknowns.
As said earlier, the JAR rating really doesn’t like Illinois here. I feel that the 85% win probability for the Vols is a little high, but there’s reason to follow the formula here. Looking back, JAR did a pretty good job of calling the Illini’s season too. On top of the obvious losses to Indiana and Ohio State, it predicted an Illini loss to Washington and it had the Wisconsin game as a toss-up. The only game JAR got wrong for Illinois was the USC game—a game the system thought was as certain a loss for the Illini as it sees this Music City matchup.
JAR also cannot account for whatever special sauce Bielema has that keeps him winning games against more talented teams. It’s kind of incredible: when Bielema took over at Illinois, they had the 56th-most talented roster in CFB. This year it’s #64. The rating has improved slightly (from 630.2 to 662.1), but the ranking has dropped as other teams became more talented too. By comparison, Tennessee had the 19th-best roster when Josh Heupel took over, and this season the rank is 16. But the talent rating in Knoxville is much higher, rising from 780.8 in 2021 to 866.6 this year. Regardless, Bielema consistently beats more talented teams. It makes me wonder what would happen if you gave Bielema a truly talented squad. Would he look like an all-time great? Or would he regress to the mean? Is Bret Bielema just an 8-4 coach regardless of the roster?
However, notwithstanding any Bielema voodoo or other unknowable variables, the smart pick is Tennessee in this game. While the Vols don’t have any big wins, they also have no truly bad losses. Yes, losing to Vanderbilt is inexcusable, but take the name off the jersey and that team is far better than either the Wisconsin or Washington teams Illinois lost to. On top of that, the Illini’s opt-outs are highly impactful. Arion Carter and Chris Brazzell are certainly two of Tennessee’s best players. But you don’t casually lose an all-conference left tackle and the Big 10’s best pass rusher without feeling it. Tennessee’s roster is built to absorb their opt-outs better than Illinois’ is. I do believe the game will be tougher than how JAR sees it, but UT pulls away in the end. Vols 38, Illini 23.