Tennessee has been an afterthought when it comes to the 2025 College Football Playoff, but that has quickly changed following the results of week one. Nobody is crowning Tennessee just yet, but plenty of eyes were opened as the country figured out that the Volunteers would be just fine in life after Nico Iamaleava. Perhaps even more eyes were opened late on Saturday night following Iamaleava’s flop of a debut
for UCLA.We’ve said it plenty over the past several weeks — Tennessee may have even upgraded
at the position with the addition of Joey Aguilar. It’s early, but that appears to be true. The senior quarterback was rock solid against Syracuse, pushing the ball down the field and looking very comfortable operating at Josh Heupel’s pace. For the first time in a while, Tennessee looked like the Tennessee 0f 2022.
After seeing the new-look Tennessee, ESPN analysts Andrea Adelson and Bill Connelly placed the Volunteers in their projected CFP fields.
Adelson has Tennessee as a projected No. 7 seed, which would create a matchup against No. 10 Florida State in Knoxville.
Connelly has Tennessee as a projected No. 9 seed, which would set up a trip to No. 8 seed Iowa State in the first round.
Outside of Tennessee’s performance, this is a reaction to what we saw around the college football landscape this weekend.
Not many people saw Alabama going down to Tallahassee and losing to Florida State, much less by two touchdowns. Miami knocked off Notre Dame on Sunday night as the Fighting Irish struggled to get going offensively for much of the night. The Arch Manning hype train came to a halt on Saturday afternoon as Texas struggled to even put a single point on the board.
Suddenly, the attitude has changed. Why not Tennessee? A veteran quarterback paired with what appears to be another stout rushing attack. A defense full of guys who have been here and done that playing for Tim Banks. A pretty favorable schedule coming up in SEC play — the Volunteers could easily find themselves on the path to a second consecutive berth in the College Football Playoff. Of course, they’ve got to get (and stay) healthy.
We’ll know quite a bit more in two weeks when Georgia comes to town, but a solid start to the season in Atlanta already has people taking notice.
