Tennessee Volunteers

Tennessee Football: Four Reasons Vols are on Upset Alert Against the Ohio Bobcats

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Sep 10, 2016; Bristol, TN, USA; The Tennessee Volunteers celebrate after the game against the Virginia Tech Hokies at Bristol Motor Speedway. Tennessee won 45 to 24. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

Tennessee football enters Week Three of the college season with two ugly victories. Here are four reasons the Volunteers could lose to the Ohio Bobcats.

Tennessee football is flying under the radar this week…as a team that could suffer a humiliating loss that is. The Vols have a tougher than expected opponent, although nobody sees it.

Across most of the SEC Media universe, the LSU Tigers have been the talk of the town in regards to teams that should be put on upset alert. After all, they have a quarterback controversy and are about to face a Mississippi State Bulldogs team that has figured it out.

Nobody is thinking about Tennessee. They’re getting ready to face a 1-1 MAC team that lost to the Texas State Bobcats in its season opener.

As a result, Vegas favors the Vols by 27.5 points.

That’s oddly high for a team that went to overtime against the Appalachian State Mountaineers and then fell behind by two touchdowns early to the Virginia Tech Hokies.

Okay, so Ohio isn’t a great team, and maybe Tennessee will cover the spread. Heck, this game could be a blowout before halftime.

But they are dangerous. This team lost to Appalachian State on a neutral field last year by less than a field goal.

The Vols beat Appalachian State in overtime at home this year. Why, then, does nobody give the Bobcats a chance to pull off this upset?

Well, we’re not going to write them off in this post.

Here are four reasons Tennessee football could lose this weekend to the Ohio Bobcats.

Sep 1, 2016; Knoxville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers head coach Butch Jones during the first quarter against the Appalachian State Mountaineers at Neyland Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

1. Coaching

Tennessee football coaches Butch Jones and Mike DeBord are great offensive minds when it comes to everything but what happens on the field. As a head coach, Jones does a great job of evaluating talent and recruiting. He has a great staff that develops that talent.

And he is great at preparation.

Meanwhile, DeBord is very good at getting his players ready to go as well. But the two together have no creativity. They stick to the script as much as possible.

Meanwhile, Bob Shoop is the opposite. He’s an analytics guy who can coach and develop talent but focuses mainly on the numbers game. As a result, his in-game adjustments are amazing. But you can catch him off-guard early.

All of this makes for a huge problem for the coaches as they get set to face Frank Solich. The 71-year old has not let the game pass him by since he left the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Solich adapted from the triple option to the spread option, and he has the perfect personnel to run that spread in Greg Windham at quarterback and Dorian Brown, and Papi White at running back.

The Bobcats could prepare well enough to catch Shoop completely off-guard early. And if Solich has a good game plan on defense to surprise Jones and DeBord, they may never recover if that happens.

There is a great chance that Solich will be one step ahead of Jones and DeBord all day. And if Shoop catches up or even surpasses him on defense, it could be too late for Tennessee football.

By the way, one reason that Solich could stay ahead of Jones and DeBord takes us to our next point.

Sep 10, 2016; Bristol, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers quarterback Joshua Dobbs (11) celebrates scoring a touchdown against the Virginia Tech Hokies during the second quarter at Bristol Motor Speedway. Mandatory Credit: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports

2. Offensive Line Play for the Vols

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Tennessee football has been embarrassing up front so far on offense this year.

Yes, Chance Hall is hurt. But redshirt freshman Drew Richmond has not yet lived up to his five-star hype as a blindside tackle. And Coleman Thomas has become an inexplicable disaster at center.

The good news is that DeBord was smart enough to move Thomas away from center and put Dylan Wiesman there in the Virginia Tech game. That allowed the Vols’ offense to get going.

The bad news is Richmond is still having trouble, and that move makes the Vols a lot thinner. So what can they do?

Well, they’ll be in trouble again this weekend against an Ohio Bobcats team that returned six of its front seven. Sure, the secondary is atrocious, and the Texas State Bobcats exposed that two weeks ago.

But Joshua Dobbs is one of those quarterbacks who is useless when throwing the ball under pressure. So he needs his line.

With Quentin Poling, Tarell Basham, and other elite veterans that could make for a deadly Ohio pass rush, the Vols could have trouble all night. Expect Dobbs to see a lot of rushes.

At the same time, Ohio is smart enough to stay in its lanes at linebacker. Remember, this is a unit as good as Appalachian State’s unit was. And look what they did to the Vols.

Tennessee is in trouble on the offensive line right now, and this is no regular tune-up game for them. They have lots of work to do there. Ohio has just the right personnel to give them more trouble.

Sep 26, 2015; Gainesville, FL, USA; Florida Gators wide receiver Brandon Powell (4) runs with the ball as Tennessee Volunteers linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin (21) and linebacker Darrin Kirkland Jr. (34) defend during the first half at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

3. Darrin Kirkland Jr.’s Injury

We’ve already detailed the fact that Tennessee is facing a dangerous misdirection offense and a coach that could get the best of them early on that side of the ball. One thing that makes that much harder to stop is that the Vols will be missing one of the most important pieces to stopping such plays….their middle linebacker.

Darrin Kirkland Jr. will sit out while Colton Jumper will take his spot this Saturday. And that is a huge, huge problem.

Look, maybe we’re too harsh. But we keep lamenting the fact that Jumper is horrible. At the same time, the coaches inexplicably keep playing him!

Now he’s back to starting with Kirkland out. And that’s going to be a huge issue, as this team is extremely thin at linebacker.

You saw what happened in the Tennessee football opener when the Vols lost Jalen Reeves-Maybin. Now, it won’t be as bad this week without Kirkland since Reeves-Maybin is the quarterback of the defense.

But it will still be a major issue.

If Jumper can’t get off blocks, which he always has trouble doing, the Bobcats have one less player to worry about in their scheme. And Frank Solich, who is already a great offensive coach, will know how to exploit that all day.

Kirkland is one of the top guys the Vols can’t afford to lose long-term, so it makes sense for Jones to rest him. However, it can make things difficult for them this weekend.

And the thing that makes this most difficult is that the Vols have all these issues right before…our final reason.

Sep 1, 2016; Knoxville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers mascot Smokey during the second half against the Appalachian State Mountaineers at Neyland Stadium. Tennessee won in overtime 20 to 13. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

4. Tennessee-Ohio is a Trap Game for Vols

Look, there’s no way around this. In every way, shape, and form, this is a dangerous trap game for Tennessee football.

The Ohio Bobcats suffered an unlikely and fluke upset loss to open the season against the Texas State Bobcats. As a result, nobody remembers that they blew out a Power Five team on the road last week in the Kansas Jayhawks.

And nobody remembers that they are a favorite to win the MAC this year and just barely lost to the Appalachian State Mountaineers in last year’s bowl game.

So Tennessee is playing a 1-1 Group of Five team that is unranked and lost to Texas State. That game, meanwhile, is sandwiched in between a thrilling win over the Virginia Tech Hokies in the Battle at Bristol, the largest attended college football game ever, and with the Florida Gators coming to town the next week.

All offseason, Tennessee football fans said that the Vols will define the 2016 season with their four-game stretch from Florida to Alabama and Texas A&M and Georgia in between.

So at 2-0, the players will only be focused on that four-game stretch beginning next week. And the team to kick off that stretch is Florida of all people, the most circled game on the Vols’ schedule, as they are desperate to end this 11-game losing streak on top of the fact that it’s an SEC East game.

How in the world can the Vols seriously be thinking about a 1-1 MAC team that lost to Texas State when that’s going on?

They can’t.

And unfortunately, Ohio is good enough to surprise any team that doesn’t think about them. So Tennessee is in trouble. They need to put this game away early to make sure their season isn’t ruined before it starts.