Tennessee opens the home schedule as a heavy favorite over visiting Missouri. The Tigers have been a thorn in the Vols side since entering the league. Tennessee is 3-5 against Missouri and the losses have been ugly. The Tigers enter in transition as they get the Drinkwitz era going. Starting a season with a new coach with no spring practice and an odd fall camp is no easy task. Alabama dominated Missouri in the trenches a week ago and had their way with them throwing the football. The Tigers won the second half against Saban’s second unit and no one can question how hard Missouri played.

Tennessee must take care of the football and not give the Tigers anything easy. If they do then the Vols should be able to move to 2-0 and set up a big road trip to Athens next week.

Vols 24 Missouri 17

Tennessee has a great chance to go to 2-0 tomorrow at noon. Jeremy Pruitt has insisted all week that Missouri is much better than people are giving them credit for and I believe he is right. The game is at home but this isn’t your normal year so home field advantage goes somewhat out the window in my opinion. Roundtree is back for his 47th year with the Tigers but their questions come at quarterback even though they showed flashes last week throwing the ball at times.

All eyes will once again be on Jarrett Guarantano as he looks to continue to show off consistency and raise the floor of his play. He should have a ton of confidence coming into this one because of his 400 yard plus performance last fall. While the receivers have changed, he remembers that special November night.

My feeling, is that Tennessee wins this game without hesitation but the scoreboard says it was closer than most thought.

Vols 30 Missouri 20

It’s hard for me to put a lot of stock in Missouri making it look fairly respectable against Alabama last week. They were dominated in the first half and trailed 35-3 before they got anything going. Yes, they were hurt by some negative plays that killed drives, but the offense didn’t look like it had a lot of explosion.

If Tennessee can contain Rountree, and I think they can given Missouri’s suspect offensive front combined with how solid the run defense was at South Carolina, then I don’t see the Tigers generating much in the way of offense.

For their own part Tennessee needs to clean up their third down issues from last week. One way to do that will be to lean more heavily on the run game than they did in the first half last week when Jim Chaney called seven designed run plays. That’s not the way to play football when you have the depth and experience that the Vols do up front and at tailback, especially when you add Cade Mays to the mix.

Vegas has Tennessee as a 12.5 favorite over the Tigers and I think the Vols are a safe pick at that number.

Tennessee 34, Missouri 20