There are plenty of mixed expectations for Tennessee Football heading into the college football season, with ongoing debate around how the Vols can potentially turn some of their biggest questions into strengths to navigate the new nine-game SEC slate.
That all being said, there’s hardly been any talk around Tennessee being a College Football Playoff team. The Vols have been excluded from several way-too-early playoff projections this offseason.
Not for one analyst, though. While speaking on Tennessee’s upcoming season, CBS Sports analyst Chip Patterson predicted Tennessee to make the College Football Playoffs as one of the final teams in the race and laid out the road map for how to get there. Patterson has Tennessee going 9-3 on the season, with losses to Texas, Alabama, and Texas A&M. The last one is a bit flexible, though, as Patterson says that he thinks Tennessee ultimately splits the back-to-back games against Texas A&M and LSU late in the year.
“I will say that for Tennessee, you do have a situation, looking at this schedule, where I think that you’ve got to love the talent and the status of where you sit in the SEC,” Patterson said. “As Auburn is going through transition, as Arkansas is going through transition, as Kentucky is going through transition, you’ve got a couple of spots where potentially plucky, thorn-in-your-side type teams are not necessarily in a position to jump up in weight class in my opinion.”
Tennessee does have the fortune of playing three conference games with brand new head coaches in the SEC, including Auburn, Arkansas, and Kentucky. But there are still some heavy hitters on Tennessee’s schedule.
“Then it’s going to come down to being able to take care of business in some of those biggest games,” Patterson said. “You will note that I’ve got a win against LSU. Yes, that is another Lane Kiffin trip to Knoxville that I’ve got my eyes on. I think that somewhere between that and Texas A&M, it ends up being one-and-one through that stretch. But that win against LSU, the way that I’ve got this laid out, could leave them at 9-3 and potentially be their path to being the last team into the College Football Playoffs.”
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Patterson acknowledges that his prediction is a good step above the Vols’ 7.5 win total, but that Tennessee is “certainly” one of the SEC teams that he’s highest on with the offseason hitting its final stages.
Tennessee will start the season with three straight non-conference games, vs Furman, at Georgia Tech, and vs Kennesaw State, before moving into SEC play. The Vols then host Texas and Auburn in back-to-back home games before going to Arkansas. Tennessee will then return home to play Alabama and hit the road to play South Carolina before the open date on Halloween. The Vols close out the season by hosting Kentucky, going to Texas A&M, hosting LSU, and going to Vanderbilt.
ESPN Analytics gives Tennessee an average of five SEC wins this season, and has the Vols with a 2.3% chance of winning 11+ games and a 92.4% chance of winning 6+ games.
It is worth noting that Patterson’s prediction is a diversion from the majority of discourse around Tennessee this year. There have been some big questions around Tennessee that have made other analysts back off from any lofty predictions, such as the freshman quarterback battle, the new defensive scheme, and the Chaz Coleman situation, which we now know has ended with UT parting ways with the former Penn State EDGE rusher.
Here’s a look at Tennessee’s full schedule for the 2026 season:
