A chance to bounce back.
Tennessee has to find a way to pick up the pieces following an ugly performance in Gainesville over the weekend, and they’ll have to do it against college football’s most prolific passers over the last three seasons. The Volunteers welcome Frank Harris and UTSA to town on Saturday, looking to get things back on track before handling the rest of the SEC schedule.
UTSA fell to 1-2 on Friday, dropping a game to Army. Harris was unavailable for that one, and Army led the entire way to secure a 37-29 win. Harris was spotted in a boot on the sidelines after suffering an injury in week two against Texas State. Obviously his status will be a big storyline coming into Saturday.
With a healthy Harris, the Roadrunners dropped a close one in week one to Houston, 17-14.
Per DraftKings Sportsbook, Tennessee is a 20 point favorite as of Monday morning. That number opened somewhere in the teens, and has moved out ever since, likely due to Harris.
Tennessee certainly has issues of their own to iron out. Nothing clicked on Saturday night in Gainesville, really on either side of the ball. The Volunteers were gashed on the ground, and the offense once again fell flat in the second quarter. Josh Heupel’s team needs to get some chemistry and momentum rolling in the right direction with the teeth of the schedule quickly approaching.
“Extremely disappointing start to the football game, first half,” Heupel said after the loss on Saturday night. “Not very good in any sense of the way. Offense had the one drive and defense got the one stop. Other than that, not the way you wanna start. I do appreciate the competitiveness of the guys come out and compete and play in in the second half. Still didn’t play as clean as we need to, as well as we need to in a lot of ways. But they did fight. We gotta get a lot better.”
Tennessee and UTSA are set for a 4 p.m. ET kickoff on Saturday. SEC Network will have the call.
Odds/lines subject to change. T&Cs apply. See DraftKings.com/sportsbook for details.