The Pre-Preview: Tennessee vs. Syracuse 2025
Big Orange vs. Bad Orange in the Big Peach
Tennessee starts the 2025 campaign against Syracuse in Atlanta, and CFAJ starts to pre-preview the season right here.
A Year Ago
2024 Syracuse, propelled by a high-powered offense, went 10-3 (5-3 ACC) in Fran Brown’s first year as head coach. It was the eighth ten-win season in ‘Cuse history, and the 3rd since 2001. But it was by far the most explosive offense Syracuse has ever had. Kyle McCord obliterated the school’s single-season passing record with 4,779 yards—the previous record was 3,749 by Ryan Nassib in 2012, and that’s the only other 3000+ yard season in Syracuse history. The year was highlighted by wins over Georgia Tech and CFP contender Miami, but also featured losses to teams from the bottom-half of he ACC in Pitt, Boston College, and Stanford.
It seems unlikely, though, that the Orange will repeat 2024’s success in 2025.
Personnel
This is a rough draft of a graphic I’ll post for each game this year. Of course the school hasn’t officially posted starters for the Fall yet, so the projected starters come from Ourlads.com and Phil Steele’s guide. It will get cleaned up before the regular season, but some of the main takeaways would be:
Kyle McCord is gone. The most prolific passing QB in Syracuse history is being replaced by transfers from Notre Dame (Steve Angeli) and LSU (Rickie Collins) who threw a total of 41 passes in 2024.
The WRs McCord threw to are also gone, for the most part. The lone returning starter at WR is Darrell Gill, who was fifth on the team in receptions in 2024 with 31 and 4th on the team in receiving yards with 570, though he led the team in yards per reception at 18.4.
There is some help coming at WR in the form of Texas transfer Johntay Cook, who is Syracuse’s lone top-200 recruit (by my initial check, there’s a couple of names I need to double-check before week 1).
Most of the offensive line is gone, anchored on the right side by returning starters De’Metrius Weatherspoon and Joe Cruz, and adding Alabama transfer Naquil Betrand and Louisville transfer Austin Collins.
Top RB LeQuint Allen is gone, replaced by last year’s #2 RB Yasin Willis (who ran for just 130 yards in 2024).
The defense has more returning starters than the offense, but that could work against the Orange as the defense was pretty terrible a year ago.
SU’s special teams were horrid in 2024. They return both kickers.
Outlook
The JAR rating hates Syracuse, giving the Orange a -1.5 rating (remember 0 is the average team in JAR) and an overall ranking of #75. JAR predicts only SU’s game against FCS Colgate as a sure win and week 2’s matchup against UConn as their only “toss-up”:
Kelley Ford’s ratings, which are much more established and certainly more reliable than JAR, doesn’t hate ‘Cuse quite as much. But they’re not that far off. KFord has the Orange at #54 with a 3.1 rating (0 is also average in KFord’s ratings). Additionally, JAR’s final record probability projects Syracuse to most likely go 3-9 overall and 2-6 or 1-7 in the ACC:
Which is pretty much in line with KFord’s projected wins total:
While KFord likes Syracuse a little more than JAR does (and personally I do think they are closer to a 5 win team than a 2 win team), neither rating likes the Orange much at all. The same is true with Bill Connelly’s SP+ ratings ($), which has Syracuse at #56 and a rating of 1.6 (again 0 is average in SP+) at a win total of 4.8:
So the consensus says Syracuse will be one of the bottom teams in the ACC, likely to win somewhere between two and five games. If you as a Vol fan have talked yourself into worrying about this game over the course of the offseason, remember last year’s game against NC State? The Vols routed the Wolfpack 51-10 in what was supposed to be one of Tennessee’s biggest tests of the year. And there was much more reason to be bullish on 2024 NC State than there is on 2025 Syracuse.
So Why?
Let me first say, a lot of what I’m about to point out also applies to Tennessee. I will explain why it’s different for the Vols, so just hang with me.
All of the ratings systems I’ve referred to rely on returning production and talent level to make preseason ratings. Syracuse is hurting when it comes to both of those metrics. All of SU’s production in 2024 relied on the arm of McCord. But Kyle McCord is gone. And what’s more, the Orange went through Spring practice thinking Rickie Collins was going to be their QB. It was only after seeing Collins practice all Spring that Fran Brown & Co. decided they needed another QB and went after Angeli. You know what that tells me? They don’t think they have a QB. You don’t go QB hunting in the Spring window if you feel like you’ve got your guy. Seemingly the only offensive player with a truly high ceiling is transfer Johntay Cook. Plus the losses at WR, OL, and RB… it all looks like a big step backwards for the Orange in 2025.
“But!,” you say, “Tennessee also went QB hunting in the Spring portal! UT lost most of their OL, nearly their whole WR room, and RB/SEC Offensive Player of the Year Dylan Sampson! Those losses are just as big as Syracuse’s losses, right?”
Good point, but here’s the difference. First, Tennessee has a track record under Josh Heupel of producing rushing yards. Tennessee’s lowest rushing total since 2021 was in the ‘22 season, when the Vols were easily the SEC’s best passing offense. So while the loss of Dylan Sampson is no small thing, UT will in all likelihood be able to run the ball in ‘25.
At wide receiver, both UT and SU lost their receiving leaders from last season. But unlike Syracuse, Tennessee is upgrading talent across the board at WR. While the Orange added the aforementioned Cook as a high-level player, Tennessee’s lowest-ranked player would be the lone returner from ‘24, Chris Brazzell. You might remember him from such catches as diving TD in the back of the endzone to beat Alabama. Yes, they guy who made the acrobatic, game-winning catch against the Tide is Tennessee’s least talented receiver. I think the Vols will be OK at wide out.
And that leaves the elephant in the room—quarterback. Both Tennessee and Syracuse lost last year’s starter. Both went looking for help in the late transfer window. And by some reports, UT went after and missed on the guy that SU landed. So why would the Vols be in a better spot? Again, this is the preseason, and all we can go by is talent level and returning production, and Tennessee’s QB room wins out in both regards. UT’s Joey Aguilar threw for 3,000+ yards in each of two seasons as starter at App State. Syracuse’s QB room has thrown for 810 career yards total over four aggregate seasons. Tennessee didn’t win 10 games and make the CFP in ‘24 because of QB play, they made it on a stout defense and relentless running game. Syracuse won 10 games in ‘24 almost entirely because of Kyle McCord, a QB who was already a 3,000-yard passer before joining the Orange. Unless Fran Brown is an absolute offensive savant—and to be fair, he might be and we just don’t know it yet—he won’t be able to replicate what McCord and the Orange achieved a year ago.