Tennessee

Volunteers · SEC

Head coach Josh Heupel Year 5 with Tennessee

Season Projection · 2026 W0

10,000 sims

7.3

Expected wins

7-5

Proj record

4 to 10

Win range (90%)

#24 (10–45)

Final rank (90%)

10%

Make playoff

Win conference

Path to Glory

Tap a win or a loss on each pivotal game to see how the playoff probability shifts. Leave any game unset to average across both outcomes.

Make the playoff

10%

Baseline projection.

at Vanderbilt

Away · Nov 28
at Texas A&M

Away · Nov 14
at South Carolina

Away · Oct 24
at Arkansas

Away · Oct 10
vs Texas

Home · Sep 26

Pivotal games are the 5 with the largest playoff-probability swing, ranked by the model. Math: chained Bayesian log-odds update from the conditional simulation set; gets the directionally right answer but won't perfectly capture cross-game correlations until the full Monte Carlo pipeline lands.

Returning production · 2025

46 PCI

Quarterback 20% (1/5 players)
Offensive line 48% (10/21 players)
Skill (RB/WR/TE) 48% (16/33 players)
Front 7 (DL/LB) 69% (25/36 players)
Secondary 71% (15/21 players)
Special teams 57% (4/7 players)

PCI weights returning production by position group (QB/OL heaviest). 70%+ is healthy continuity; 45-70% is a normal rebuild; below 45% is a meaningful turnover.

Situational efficiency · 2025

FBS percentile rank

3rd-down conversion 44.6% 91th — elite
Red-zone TD rate 17.1% 72th — strong
4th-down aggression 41.0% 70th — strong
Late & close 6.2 yds/play 78th — strong

Percentile is across all FBS teams with play-by-play data for the season. "Late & close" is yards per play in Q4+ with a one-score margin — a proxy for clutch offensive performance.

Schedule

Full 2026 slate. Tap a row for the matchup breakdown.

Latest Stories

Stories about Tennessee will appear here as they're published. Check back during the season for analysis, hot takes, and game write-ups.

More coming

Per-team pages get the full treatment in Phase 3: current rating, season projection histogram, schedule with win probabilities, and live overlays on Pylon stream days. For now, this page exists so stories and news have a permanent home as content rolls in.