Tennessee Football landed a pair of contests on ESPN’s 2025 Top 100 College Football Games list on Tuesday afternoon. The list featured both of Tennessee’s overtime games, with one win and one loss, on the chart.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly tagged Tennessee’s 41-34 overtime win over Mississippi State as the 95th-best game of the college football season. The contest saw the Volunteers and the Bulldogs trade blows in Starkville, with Tennessee’s offense scoring the game’s final 14 points and the Vols’ defense getting a crucial fourth-down stop to keep Mississippi State out of the endzone.
Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar threw for 335 yards, one touchdown, and one interception during the game. He also ran for one touchdown. The Vols’ stable of running backs went for 110 yards on the ground, while Mike Matthews had a team-high 118 receiving yards. Tennessee’s defense had two crucial touchdowns in the game, with Colton Hood’s 23-yard pick-six and Joshua Josephs’ 41-yard scoop-and-score.
“Tennessee nearly got Starkville’d,” Connelly wrote. “In a game with eight lead changes, the Vols kept pulling ahead and falling behind again. MSU scored 10 points in three minutes to take a 34-27 lead late, but Joey Aguilar capped a 13-play, six-minute drive with a 6-yard TD run. Tennessee nearly drove into field goal range late but had to wait for OT to win it: DeSean Bishop scored on a 25-yard run on UT’s first overtime snap, but while MSU quickly generated a first-and-goal from the 5, the Bulldogs could only gain one more yard. Arion Carter broke up a fourth-down pass to Anthony Evans III, and the Vols survived.”
It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t always an easy watch, but the Vols’ effort moved Tennessee to 4-1 on the season heading into October.
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The second Tennessee game on ESPN’s list is one that’ll be implanted in Vol fans’ memories for the wrong reasons. Tennessee’s 44-41 overtime loss at home against Georgia lands as the No. 12 game of the season, according to Connelly’s rankings.
“Tennessee hasn’t beaten Georgia since 2016,” Connelly writes. “We’re using the present tense there because, despite taking a 21-7 first-quarter lead, despite forcing a Georgia fourth-and-6 from the 28 with 2:32 left, and despite setting up a potential winning 43-yard field goal attempt at the buzzer, the Vols managed to let this one slip away.”
As mentioned, Tennessee blitzed Georgia out of the gates inside a rocking Neyland Stadium. The Vols scored three touchdowns in the first quarter with a Joey Aguilar run and a pair of Chris Brazzell touchdowns, going for 72 yards and 14 yards, respectively. The middle of the game was all Georgia, though. Between the second and third quarters, Georgia went on a 20-0 run. Tennessee did manage to stop the bleeding with a 56-yard touchdown to Brazzell before the fourth quarter.
The Vols and Bulldogs both scored 10 points in the final frame, but it could’ve been 13 from the Vols. Max Gilbert’s game-winning attempt from 43 yards out missed wide right and set up overtime. Tennessee scored a field goal with the ball first, but Georgia came back and won the game with a one-yard touchdown run.
Joey Aguilar threw for 371 yards, four touchdowns, and two interceptions, while also running in one on the ground. Tennessee’s trio of backs picked up 133 yards on the ground. Chris Brazzell had a monsterous game-high 177 receiving yards and three touchdowns.
