I’m struggling to remember a season where, 10 games in, I still did not have a real grasp on what Tennessee’s football team was.
On one hand, the Vols have not beaten a team with a winning record. Their SEC wins have been against teams that had not won a single conference game until this past weekend (Kentucky and Mississippi State got their first SEC wins on Saturday). You can easily say UT is a mediocre team that benefits from a weak schedule.
On the other hand, in each of Tennessee’s three losses the Vols have shot themselves in the foot. Missed a game-wining FG against UGA. Pick-6 on the goal line against Bama—a 14-point swing in a 17-point game. This week it was two horrific picks and a fumble returned 71 yards for a touchdown. Two of those turnovers on scoring opportunities for the Vols turned into points for the Sooners.
If, in any one of those games, Tennessee had not pulled the real-life version of Sideshow Bob stepping on the rake repeatedly, they would be a two-loss team with the playoffs squarely in front of them. Simply take care of business in two of those games and you could start looking at hotel rooms in Atlanta. If they had avoided stumping their toe on the coffee table in all three games—which is a big ask after all, every team has some bad luck and adversity in the course of a season, but if—they would easily be a top-five team in the CFP rankings when they come out this week.
Instead, we are where we are—not knowing if this Tennessee team is a squad of cupcake merchants or a handful of plays away from a championship-quality team.
Five Factor Box Score
If you’d told me before the game that Oklahoma would score less than 3 points per scoring opportunity, I would bet the house on Tennessee winning. It solves the biggest weakness Tennessee has had so far in 2025: the defense against the Sooners was bending (evidenced by OU’s high success rate and number of scoring opportunities) but not breaking (under a FG’s worth on scoring opps). I would’ve never imagined Tennessee to score just 2.22 PPO themselves. Even against Alabama—Tennessee’s worst offensive showing coming into Saturday—the Vols scored about 1.5 points higher per scoring opportunity than they did against Oklahoma.
The havoc rates are troubling as well. Oklahoma came in with the nation’s highest havoc rate, but without Aguilar’s head-scratching interceptions, the Sooners would have had their lowest havoc rate of the season. This was UT’s second-lowest havoc rate recorded this year (they had just 10.3% against UGA).
Rushing Report
Tennessee was stymied in the run game all night long, averaging a putrid 1.8 yards per carry (Oklahoma averaged 5.5 on the same number of rushes). That’s likely why Tennessee chose to throw to the flat on a crucial 4th-quarter 4th-and-1 rather than trying to gain the yard on the ground. It speaks to the confidence (or lack thereof) in the push this OL could get against the Sooners.
Remember a year ago when UT went for it on 4th down deep in their own territory against Florida? Tennessee was willing to gamble the season on the OL’s ability to impose their will and gain a yard in that game. In this game, the Vols decided they’d be better off throwing to a freshman TE who had not been targeted on the day rather than trust the OL to get any kind of push.
Player Usage & PPA
John Mateer beat you with his legs. His -4.2 PPA passing reflect the throwing woes OU had all night. But his +9 PPA rushing tell a different story. Mateer has been a pretty good running QB throughout his career, but this year in SEC games he was averaging just 1.4 yards per carry. On Saturday, he had 5 YPC on 16 rushes. Mateer out-rushed Tennessee as a team on his own.
Predicted Points Added rarely tell the whole story, but they can often tell a good chunk of the story. You’ll see a lot of red in the 2nd Quarter column for the Vols, and that’s because Tennessee had two drives in the period, both ending in interceptions. The game’s first drive was nearly perfect for UT, but then the Vols went fumble-FG-missed FG to end the 1st. Each of those drives made it inside the OU 40 yard line, so along with the first INT that’s four scoring opportunities netting -4 points for the Vols (when you factor in the scoop & score fumble). Not a winning formula.
Extraneous
Of note: this was a zero-coach-effect game. In last week’s preview, I pointed out how bad Brent Venables’ CE is (-13 in four years at OU) and how Josh Heupel has done a good job of winning games where he had the less-talented team, especially at home (+2 coach effect overall at UT and +5 at home since 2022). Oklahoma has the more talented roster, so they were “supposed to” win this game, at least from a coach effect standpoint. Had Tennessee won, it would have been another +1 for Heupel and -1 for Venables. Since OU won, there was no change to either’s coach effect number. This will be the first year since Huepel’s first season at Tennessee that he does not get a coach effect win at home (UGA and OU were his two shots at one this season, though he could still get one at Florida). The loss feels just bad because it fell short of Heupel’s own standard, and because it was a winnable game that Tennessee let slip away through sloppy play.