The 2025 season rolls into week nine and Kentucky football will welcome its rival No. 17 Tennessee into Kroger Field.
Sometimes it’s best to learn about the opponent from the viewpoint of the opposing team’s beat reporter and that’s just what the Across the (By)line” aims to do.
This week: The Daily Beacon, Trever McGee, Tennessee
Tennessee has dropped games to both Alabama and Georgia, what has stopped it from getting over the hump?
“It’s, it’s a really funny situation, because you look at that Georgia game, and Tennessee did everything they could to win that game, and then they come out against Alabama, and look like a completely different football team.
“They had a chance to put the game (Georgia) away late there in the fourth quarter, and they didn’t. So that one, was a coaching malfunction, and then Alabama was just utter no preparation frankly. There was never chance in that game.
“It’s absolutely a hump that’s a concern. Tennessee’s not been able to get over that hump in the Josh Heupel tenure. Road games have been his demise, there’s no way to avoid that fact, and for that reason, it absolutely is a concern that you go to Kroger field this week coming off of such a demoralizing loss, it’s hard to say how prepared they’re really going to be for this.”
Following these losses during Heupels tenure, how have these teams responded in your eyes?
“The big thing is they tend to avoid back-to-back road games. It’s not very often that they do go with multiple road games in a row, so that’s helped out a lot. They look like, frankly, a completely different team when they do play at home. Heupel said it earlier this week, he doesn’t think they’ve played perfectly at home this year, but there’s a reason they’ve only lost two games at home since 2021, both of those to Georgia.
“It tends to work out in a way that Tennessee has a very winnable game on the road, they’re not necessarily going to blunder. I think that’s the hope with Tennessee this week, is the fact that they do have a very winnable Kentucky game on the road, and it can bring a lot of confidence if you win it, knowing that you were able to wash away an Alabama lost. But if you end up losing this game, it takes the train completely off the tracks, and that’ll be the concerning piece.”
Every SEC game for Tennessee has been close, why can’t they put teams away and could that happen this weekend?
“There’s not really been a complete 60 minutes of football played in SEC play, and that’s kind of been a common theme under Heupel. He’s never been the type to just put the foot on the gas and just blow a team out.
“There’s been struggles midway through the game that Tennessee hasn’t really capitalized on against Georgia, it was a big thing. They come out, they scored 21 points in the first quarter against Georgia. The second quarter, I believe they had 35 total yards in the entire quarter. It’s just the fact that they’re not playing every quarter to its completion.
“I think if you’re Kentucky, you’re looking at those second quarters that Tennessee struggling, and you’re looking at the third quarter coming out of halftime where they’re struggling a little bit. It’s the middle portion of the game that Tennessee is not having its best days, and other teams are capitalizing.”
If Kentucky pulls off the upset, what part of Tennessee do they need to exploit?
“Tennessee was top 40 in the country and just about every defensive metric possible last year. Now they’re lucky if they’re breaking top 100 in the country, in the defensive categories, a lot of that in the secondary.
“You don’t have Ricky Gibson III, you don’t have Jermod McCoy, if they’re available, it’s probably the best defensive back duo in the country. So, you can blame a little bit on that, but the biggest issue this year has been Tennessee’s run defense has been atrocious, there’s no other way to put it.”
When it’s all over in Lexington on Saturday night, who comes out on top?
“I’m going to still roll with 24-13 Tennessee; the offense just hasn’t looked the exact same. They were averaging 45 points per game for the first four or five games of the year. They had 20 against Alabama last week, they had 34 against a really bad Arkansas defense.
“I think Tennessee’s offense is going to kind of continue on that linear path of not doing as well as they should be. It’s kind of hard to look at the Kentucky offense and think that they’re going to magically put it all together as well.
“They seem to be struggling to find the end zone as well. So hopefully it’s on Tennessee side a confidence booster to get the defense having something going now that after this week, you’ll be in November.”
