Can Tennessee win SEC East? Vols' path to SEC championship game
Even after its breakthrough 2022 campaign, which included an 11-2 record and an Orange Bowl victory, there’s at least one achievement that remains elusive for Tennessee football under Josh Heupel: an SEC East division title and appearance in the conference championship game.
The Vols haven’t made it to Atlanta for the SEC championship game since 2007, a prolonged drought for a proud program. It wasn’t always this way: Over an 11-season stretch from 1997-2007, they made it to the conference championship game five times and, once there, won it twice.
Is it a skid that will end this season? With three games remaining in the 2023 college football regular season, there’s at least a chance.
At 7-2 overall and 3-2 in SEC play, Tennessee, which was No. 17 in the first College Football Playoff rankings and No. 12 in the US LBM Coaches Poll, remains alive in the race for the SEC East crown as perhaps the most challenging portion of its schedule awaits. Unfortunately, the Vols do not control their destiny as it relates to a divisional title.
What needs to happen for coach Heupel and his team to make that long-awaited trip back to Atlanta? Let’s take a look:
Tennessee path to SEC championship
With their 3-2 record against SEC teams, the Vols are two games behind No. 2 Georgia with only three games remaining for each team.
Given that, here’s the sequence of events that Tennessee needs to unfold over the next month:
Beat Missouri
The Vols’ tall task can be broken up into individual steps, the first of which comes in Week 11, when they hit the road to take on No. 12 Missouri at Memorial Stadium in Columbia.
Beyond Georgia and Tennessee, the Tigers are the only team in the division with fewer than three conference losses, so beating them would create some necessary distance for the Vols to accomplish anything else they need to in order to make the SEC title game.
As challenging as it is to beat a ranked opponent on the road, it’s doable in this instance. Tennessee is a one-point favorite over Missouri, according to odds from BetMGM, and it has won its past four meetings against the Tigers, including a 66-24 rout last season at Neyland Stadium and, the year before, a 62-24 win on the road.
Beat Georgia
Here’s where things get just a bit more daunting. The Bulldogs are the class not only of the division and the conference, but also of the sport as a whole. Georgia has won each of the past two national championships and has an active 26-game win streak, the longest such run at the FBS level.
The Vols’ recent games against Georgia haven’t been particularly kind to them. The Bulldogs haven’t just won their past six matchups against Tennessee; they’ve done so decisively, beating their orange-clad divisional foe by an average of 26.2 points per contest. None of those games was decided by fewer than 14 points.
The good news for the Vols is that this season’s matchup will take place in Knoxville, where Tennessee has won its past 14 games. The time the Vols lost at Neyland Stadium was Nov. 13, 2021 — against Georgia — in a 41-17 thumping about two months before the Bulldogs won their first national championship since 1980.
A win against the Bulldogs is absolutely necessary for Tennessee to have any hope of winning the division. Georgia has a two-game lead over it right now, meaning a win against the Vols on Nov. 18 would clinch a spot in the SEC championship game for it, even if it loses this Saturday against No. 10 Ole Miss. Speaking of the Rebels. ...
Georgia loses to Ole Miss
A win against Kirby Smart’s team would give Tennessee a crucial head-to-head tiebreaker against Georgia. That distinction, though, won’t matter if the Bulldogs don’t lose the first of their remaining two SEC games.
Georgia’s only other remaining SEC opponent comes on Saturday, when it hosts No. 10 Ole Miss at Sanford Stadium in Athens. The Bulldogs’ third and final remaining regular-season game is against rival Georgia Tech, a game that, win or lose, won’t count against its conference record as the Yellow Jackets are a member of the ACC.
A win against the Rebels would give Georgia its sixth SEC championship game appearance in the past seven years. But a loss, paired with a Tennessee win against Missouri, would set up one of the most hotly anticipated and consequential games of the season on Nov. 18, with a trip to Atlanta at stake for whoever manages to leave Neyland Stadium with a hard-earned victory.
Beat Vanderbilt
Bulldogs losses to Ole Miss and Tennessee wouldn't wrap up the SEC East title for the Vols without a final step in the process.
If Tennessee wins each of its next two games vs. Missouri and Georgia, it will still need to take care of Vanderbilt in its regular-season finale on Nov. 25 in Knoxville. The Commodores are struggling this season, with a 2-8 record that includes a 0-6 mark in SEC play.
The Vols have won their past four meetings against Vanderbilt and have lost just three times to the Commodores in Knoxville since 1976.
