Cut To The Chase: No. 11 Tennessee 34, Arkansas 31

What to make of the Vols who move to 5-1 halfway through the 2025 college football season.

Credit: Ryan Beatty/Tennessee Athletics

I was thinking about Slim Charles’ words of advice to Bodie early on in the fourth season of The Wire when thinking about No. 11 Tennessee’s victory over Arkansas on Saturday night. During a quick stop-and-chat, Charles offers Bodie some clarity about the changing landscape on the streets of Baltimore, “Yeah, well, the thing about the old days, they the old days,” Slim Charles tells Bodie. Things had changed for both men and for The Game as a whole.

The same is true for college football, particularly the SEC, this season. Tennessee has beaten two of the worst teams in the conference, Mississippi State and Arkansas, by a combined 10 points. Last night, No. 5 Ole Miss struggled to get past lowly Washington State. No. 10 Georgia was a goal-line fumble away from being down 17-0 at Auburn late in the second quarter before scoring 20 unanswered points to knock off the Tigers. No. 14 Oklahoma got humbled by a desperate No. 21 Texas team. No. 6 Alabama narrowly escaped at Missouri with a hard-fought 27-24 victory over the formidable Tigers. No. 10 LSU slogged its way to another win over South Carolina to improve to 5-1. The Vols, Rebels, Crimson Tide, Longhorns, and Tigers combined to win by an average of 5.8 points on Saturday. Outside of No. 4 Texas A&M dispatching Florida with ease in College Station, every top-tier team in this league had to scrape and claw to survive and advance, with three of those games being against unranked teams at home.

The old days are indeed the old days. The top tier of the SEC has never been closer to the middle tier of the SEC. Tennessee beat Mississippi State and Arkansas, No. 39 and No. 43 in ESPN’s FPI metric, by a combined six points. Tennessee has gone to overtime in two of its first three conference games. Since the start of the Josh Heupel era on Rocky Top in 2021, Tennessee had only played in one overtime game in conference play coming into this season, with that being against Florida last year in the Vols’ 23-17 victory over the Gators. They’ve already played in two to start this season, and it would not be surprising to see Tennessee find itself in another overtime game or two before conference play is over.

Sticking with ESPN’s FPI metric, the Vols, who reside at No. 13 in FBS, still have No. 16 (Vanderbilt), No. 20 (Oklahoma), No. 3 (Alabama), No. 27 (Florida), and No. 50 (Kentucky) on their schedule. The Wildcats are the worst team in the SEC this year, but Mississippi State is just three spots ahead of Mark Stoops’ Kentucky squad, and the Vols needed overtime to win on the road in Starkville two weeks ago. A lot separates Alabama and Kentucky this season, sure, but that’s not the case with Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. Or Missouri and Tennessee. Or Florida and Texas. There is no elite team in the conference this year, but there are a lot of good-but-flawed teams this year. Tennessee is one of those teams.

The Razorbacks gave Tennessee all they could handle in Neyland Stadium yesterday. The combination of Mike Washington, Braylen Russell, and Taylen Green accounted for 240 yards on the ground and two touchdowns. The Hawgs’ two lead tailbacks averaged 6.5 YPC between the two. Arkansas’s average third-down distance was 9.7, per UTStats, and Bobby Petrino’s team converted on seven of thirteen. As a whole, Arkansas averaged 7.7 yards per play in the game. Tennessee is now 116th in FBS in giving up plays of 20-plus yards.

But Tennessee won.

Through six games, the Vols still have the nation’s No. 1 scoring offense at 48.2 points per game. Josh Heupel’s team is averaging 38.2 ppg in conference play, which is, of course, tops in the SEC. Funny enough, the next closest conference foe is the team the Vols just beat, in Arkansas, who slide in at No. 31 in conference scoring. The Vols’ offense, outside of some frustrating three-and-outs like they had on Saturday after the defense forced multiple key turnovers, is doing more than enough for Tennessee to be undefeated going into Saturday’s game on the road in Tuscaloosa. On the flip side, the defense has been bad enough for Tennessee to be winless in conference play going into Saturday’s game on the road in Tuscaloosa. Only Arkansas has a worse scoring defense in the SEC this season, which is now 0-3 in conference play. The Vols are giving up 36.3 points per game in conference play while scoring 38.7 points per game in conference play. The margins are quite thin for Tennessee through three SEC games.