Alabama vs Tennessee - Preview, Prediction, and Computer Model - Third Saturday In October

[Music] foreign [Music] ERS here talking Tennessee and Alabama I got Josh here getting Nerdy with me and Josh I'm gonna jump straight into this because we do a live show every Saturday and in that live show we do a top ten and two weeks ago two weeks ago not the most recent one but two weeks ago I put Tennessee at number four I got so much hate for that Josh cabinet number four this week and the thing that I said was there's a lot of unclear You Know parody between like Four and Twenty and it's hard to know who's who but in that mess of top ten that we don't know what to do with there's one team that's got an elite unit either offensively or defensively and that's Tennessee no other team in the top ten has an elite offense in my opinion or a little defense beyond the top three um which means to me Tennessee has the highest ceiling I think we've seen that ceiling now against LSU and against Florida um but get into that a little bit just talking about this Tennessee offense matched up against what's probably the best defense in the country um I wouldn't say Tennessee is the best offense I think that goes to Ohio State but they're certainly up there talk about that matchup first it's kind of interesting when you start to look at this matchup and trying to figure out what exactly Tennessee is as a football team and I'll start by saying you talk about them having the only Elite unit now there's a lot of Clemson and Michigan fans that are currently throwing things at their computer screen probably some Penn State fans too if nothing else then for their uh for their defenses but I get at least where you're coming from and in particular I'll say Tennessee's offense is a more balanced capable attack than any other team in the country that is outside those top three it's sort of the the big caveat right one of the things that's really difficult for us when we start to do analytics and modeling and all this other stuff is trying to figure out how to take apart these teams when you don't always have data on the edges and what I mean by that is anytime you want to evaluate a football team you need to know where their break point is where their freeze point is we've started talking about this several years ago I know Josh Pates kind of picked up on it and started using his own names but college football teams generally have a point at which the offense doesn't work and a point at which the offense goes rampant and does whatever they want to do Ohio state has been past that point all year Tennessee is probably the other team the one other team that has been past that point All Season where they've generally put up a ton of points in every game and it doesn't seem to really matter how much you're doing uh they're just going to keep scoring and it really has a lot to do with the amount of explosiveness you bring into the game the amount of yards per play you bring in ETC Tennessee's been at that threshold the problem is when you start to evaluate Tennessee in regard to who they've played and how they've played them in circumstances and whether those teams are really in a position to limit their def their offense enough that Tennessee has to play football operating in the like six yard five yard per play range if that's even a feasible thing the lowest number Tennessee hit on the season was 5.4 yards per play against Pittsburgh that was a 34-27 game now technically they were 6.5 yards per play last week against LSU just like the Ball State game which was you know more more around seven yards per play that's a deceptive number Tennessee wasn't really trying to score every Drive every play in the game there's a lot of things that went wrong in that game for LSU which we'll probably talk about later so unless you think Alabama's defense is not any better than Pittsburgh which I kind of doubt you don't really know what Tennessee looks like when they face a team that might hold them to something normal and what does their offense look like when it's held to more like four and a half five yards per play does it have the same explosiveness those are the questions that we've got to figure out in this preview we're not going to figure them out on the preview but we're going to try to show you some models that talk about it a little bit a couple different angles to look at it and then conversationally sort of talk about where we're coming from yeah an Alabama defensively I mean people might look at hearts and people saying well I'm gonna give up 20 points to Texas A M and App State only given 17. look the ridiculous takes coming out of this weekend are pretty ridiculous regarding Alabama their defense is from what I've seen the best defense in the country the most explosive defense in the country they gave up 20 points against a team that was going for it almost every fourth down when they could they were in kind of Hail Mary very mode for two-thirds of the game and they inherited four turnovers and two missed field goals um it's it's insane to me to think that a team gave up 20 points and they weren't playing Iowa uh 20 points in that situation and that was a bad defensive performance it was an elite defensive performance especially if you look at Haynes King's numbers he was he threw for 253 but it was on 46 attempts 5.4 yards per they ran for like 2.8 yards per carry their production was nothing they got a couple short fields and scored some points but on the flip side Alabama and what we're going to see in the model and what we're going to see in some maybe in some predictions is Alabama's efficiency numbers are really hurt by the fact that they got a lot of yards especially on the ground last week and didn't convert those to points so a lot of models think right now that Alabama's got a scoring efficiency problem but based on everything we heard in this game Josh in in terms of like Bryce young maybe warming up in the tunnel Bryce young begging to go in on the last Drive he's probably going to be ready this week and if we're looking at it I think we should maybe couch this discussion in a way for the rest of this preview in the consideration that he will be there if that's the case what does it do to your perception of Alabama in terms of one their offensive production and two having a defense that maybe has enough depth that even if they get see a lot of plays might be able to hold up to this Tennessee offense it's a difficult thing to try to try to parse out so yeah I mean when you talk about the Texas A M performance start with the defensive side of the ball which is the more positive one for Alabama first they had to face more plays than anyone's had to face against Texas A M they faced 72 offensive snaps that's most in the year the second closest was Mississippi State who played 70 offensive snaps or I should say Texas A M played 70 against Mississippi State uh and the difference though was that Alabama held them to over a yard per play less than Mississippi state did uh held them to less yard per play than Texas A M did even against the Appalachian State game when Haynes King was just an absolute Crater of himself and their offense couldn't get anything going as you said there's a lot of factors that Appalachian State game when they lost that game 14-17 Texas A M ran 38 plays in that game about half as many as they got in the Alabama game that was the effect of the turnovers that missed field goals the way the game was going they got so many more opportunities and it's easy you know how do you fault a team that allows 20 points when at the same ratio in Appalachian State they probably would have scored about 28 30 points in that game if they played the same number of snaps so obviously the recession count was a huge deal that gets into the negative right and that has to do with where Alabama's offense is at where Bryce young is at and the first thing I'll say is my assumption like you is that Bryce young will play if Bryce young doesn't play in this game you can sort of throw everything out because I don't know how effective Alabama's offense would be without Jalen mulro and I'll probably just go ahead and say if Bryson can't go on Saturday I'm going to pick Tennessee in this game because I don't have a lot of confidence that Alabama's offense is going to be able to move the ball at all and it will totally depend on whether or not to get a different quarterback uh Jayla milro had The Yips you see a lot of young quarterbacks in their first start sort of get big eyes they don't step into their throws they use their arm and when I went back and looked at it there were a lot of really routine plays that weren't major plays you see in a highlight reel where he just missed throws to a tight end or something like that that would be a third down conversion or a sec really a conversion on second down that kind of thing where they're not completing these first and second down plays that put them in bad Throwdown situations and there were routine plays open guys on crossers they just weren't seen weren't throwing to and I think having Bryce young even with a banged up shoulder which I'm gonna go ahead and guess is going to be something like 85 percent is going to be a night and day difference because I think they can complete those routine plays and they're going to be a much more effective offense than they were can I give you a devil's advocate question though let's let's say like and I don't like doing transitive things or anything like that but like Anthony Richardson has I think one I didn't look at his final stat line from the Missouri game but has one career over two or 200 yard or better passing game in his career and I think unless he did against Missouri and it was against Tennessee and he threw for 453. um you say you wouldn't pick Alabama and I probably wouldn't either but let's give a little thought to the fact that like Jalen milro and Anthony Richardson seem to be about the same quarterback but Alabama's got a much better run game a much better defense so if there's any question on you know Tennessee's team right now it is that defense especially with the news of today that they're going to be missing probably a star player um I I think that a m is maybe a little more poised to stop Alabama's you know millro attack than maybe Tennessee is um especially when we saw it with sophomore Anthony Richardson so maybe reframe this a little bit and talk about why you think that that Alabama couldn't do the same thing that Florida did but maybe a little bit better well I mean the question we talked about Bryce young or Mill Road quarterback right uh you said millro you wouldn't pick Alabama to beat him with millro and I'm saying well what if what if they're just flirting with a better defense it's it's a fair question right is millro actually worse than Anthony Richardson because right now Anthony Richardson's quite bad and he did have uh look Richardson has had really four games this season where he was in any way confident throwing the football really only three one was Tennessee one was Utah which he only threw 24 passes only through 468 yards the other was Eastern Washington um but he was 10.1 yards per against Tennessee that is three yards per attempt higher than any other FBS team they've played not just P5 um I think it says a lot about where Tennessee's defense is there were a couple mitigating factors in the Texas A M game it bothered me that announcers didn't talk about one was that um gosh I'm drawing a blank now uh McKinley McKinley Jackson right yep the interior defensive lineman probably was set to be maybe the top interior defensive lineman in the SEC along with Jalen Carter at Georgia actually came back for the Alabama game I don't know why the announcers didn't mention that because he's been out hurt for a while and their problem's been stopping the interior run his absence is really what caused him to collapse they also got Jason Jones back in the secondary which meant that their secondary suddenly can shift over and get a lot more experience and a lot better and a lot more sound and they weren't giving up the same plays they were early in the year I do agree with you I think defensively it's a it's a sharp difference the problem is the way Alabama was executing I don't know that they're going to move the ball against anybody um I say this a lot right there are things at the quarterback position that you do that can scale well and they're things that are consistent Stetson Bennett is an extremely consistent quarterback I think he will typically move the ball well against anyone that gives him open opportunities it doesn't matter how good or bad you are if you leave Guys open he's a six-year player and he knows where they are and he finds him he completes passes if you are in lockdown coverage downfield he doesn't necessarily make a lot of hero throws what Alabama was doing bad was they weren't completing the most readily open things if they had a guy wide open they wouldn't see it they wouldn't complete the pass it may be that Melrose could make a hero throw but I kind of doubt it my concern is that it doesn't really matter how bad Tennessee is I don't think Millrose at the same place Anthony Richardson is in terms of a quarterback that can just see an open guy and throw it and hit it there's a lot of confidence there with Richardson then millro doesn't have and given the fact that Tennessee this is the important part right Tennessee's offense is so much better than Texas A M they're going to score points and so Alabama does actually have to keep Pace in this game in a way they never really had to against Texas A M right they got a lead and they just kind of held the lead and hung on for dear life I think it's a very different ball game um I feel like I'm giving a lot of monologues right now just sort of talking hypotheticals and we can continue to talk about it but I think it also could be helpful to actually dig in the model a little bit and just get all that out of the way and then maybe we can have more of a conversation about it yeah one thing I'll also add before we get into the model um maybe kind of a devil's advocate to my own Devil's advocacy is if we're looking at the Florida game itself yes Anthony Richardson had 453 yards he threw for 10 point something yards per attempt but a lot of people and I'm getting a lot of arguments on Twitter where people are like bashing Tennessee um and they're like you barely beat a bad Florida team first of all it was a major rivalry and it's a big deal to beat them at home um but that game 38-33 is not what that game was that game was a 17 point game Florida had to drive the field twice against prevent and they did to their credit they did but that was still a game that was a 17-point game with five minutes left to go in the game and Tennessee wasn't going to lose that game unless some ridiculous things happened um so they did get into a little bit of prevent road so I think it's a little unfair to say that's a five-point game you're only five points better than Florida I think the one that I would point to if I'm if I'm thinking about maybe Tennessee might not be as good as their record would be the pit game but even then that's the second game of the season and it's on the roads you could say the same thing for Alabama but yeah let's get into the model and see what it has to say so the model this week is going to be a little a little interesting because we'll start with our standard model and then we may couch it and sort of give a different description because there's some strange things going on uh the interesting thing in the model is you've sort of got the tail of the score and the tail of the yardage that Alabama defensively is Elite 55 of opponent rushing averages 72 percent of opponent passing averages Tennessee's numbers are surprisingly good right now in the model 68 of opponent rushing averages and 100 of opponent passing averages that's a good run defense it's a perfectly mediocre past events I shouldn't really say good but that's still actually the sign of a decent okay defense which I don't think has really been the reputation given where Alabama's at and Tennessee's at offensively it's important to remember Tennessee's passing game is better than Alabama's right now statistically Alabama's Run game is actually more better than Tennessee's uh passing game is versus Alabama if that makes sense Alabama's Run game is about 2.3 yards per carry better Tennessee's passing games about 2.7 2. yards per attempt better but from a percentage perspective Alabama has a bigger Edge there what that means is that Alabama actually gets a yard per play advantage in the model they're expected to have about 6.4 yards per play compared to about 4.8 yards per play for Tennessee the confusing or confounding part I think to a lot of people is despite a yard over a yard and a half per play Advantage the model favors Tennessee and it favors them by 8 36 to 28. so the model is actually predicting a situation which Alabama out gains Tennessee doesn't just outgain them but out gains them by roughly 25 percent so a significant number something you're probably looking at like a maybe 400 yard maybe 375 to 400 yards from Tennessee 500 yards from Alabama that kind of a result but the score is actually eight points in Tennessee's favor first let's unpack that Daniel before we get to the next part of the model because I think this this helps sort of set the stage right I know we talked about this a little bit before because I warned you the reality here is that Alabama's yard per play number is not being translated into points and it is due to the fact that they've had a couple games now the Texas game the Texas A M game in particular where they've had turnovers where they've had a lot of stall drives they've had some missed field goals and the model does not have much confidence in Alabama's ability to score points conversely Tennessee has not been held to anything less than 34 points in a ball game and we talk about this a lot when a team is constantly scoring mid 30s or above our model starts to think look you're going to get your points no matter what Elite offenses always tend to score that's been our mantra for the past few years so the question is how much do you trust that how much do you think the Texas A M result has anything to do with Alabama's offensive production going forward do you buy the Tennessee's offense is in that sort of elite tier where they can score 35 points or more and do you believe that leaked here even exists anymore in 2022 when it seems like defenses are starting to catch up so now that I've talked for I feel like an hour Daniel I'm gonna shut up for a minute I'm going to let you comment on it and maybe give your thoughts on the model and your thoughts about trying to place Tennessee within this context yeah I do think that maybe not quite as bad as it was during covid maybe just before covid year and then 2120 you know 2020 and 2021 where offenses were gonna score they're just going to Elite offenses we're gonna score 35 Plus even on Elite defenses I think defenses are better um but on the flip side I don't think it's all the way there I think Tennessee is gonna score on anybody I I don't know that they're going to hit 38 to 40 um but they're going to score on almost anybody I have a couple of concerns if I'm an Alabama fan one is Bryce young 100 two is he going to play at all like this could be a lot of smoke and mirrors and and millro comes out there anyway and it's on the road and you know one of the things for me is I'm kind of willing to forgive the Texas you know score and situation because it was on the road it was 120 degrees on the field Texas had prepared for six months for this game they had inside knowledge of the program um and then a lot went wrong in in that regard in terms of them they just weren't set up to do well in that game but I think the same thing with with Tennessee and Pitt if they played again today even if some of us played the whole game I think Tennessee beats them by three touchdowns so it's hard for me to judge much from those early games and then if you think about the rest of Alabama's slate with Bryce young in the game it's been Utah State UL Monroe Vandy first quarter against Arkansas like it's so hard to know if Alabama is that elite team because if they are if if Alabama is who we saw against Vanderbilt in first quarter of Arkansas with Bryce young in the game if that's who they are now they beat Tennessee but I'm not sure that it is I want to see them be that team and then are they that team with Bryce young you know at 85 percent I don't know who they are I'm gonna give a score on this I think that bryshung's gonna play and I think that he's going to be healthy enough for Alabama to put up some points I think that Alabama's defense might shock Tennessee a little bit um but even with Bryce young in the game I'm not picking Alabama to cover which means it's anybody's game 34 31 Alabama and Josh I'll say this before I turn it over to you Alabama absolutely needed to win that game last week because it gives them breathing room to lose this week they can lose this week and this might mean that they're relaxed and chill and score a bunch of points and win big they can lose this week because they're still going to win the West they're going to win the West the West isn't great this year and so as long as they win the SEC Championship they're going to the playoffs which means they've got a loss in the bag and that's why they couldn't afford to lose last week because you lose two two weeks in a row it's tough to make the playoffs we haven't seen two teams two loss Champion yet made in the playoffs so if that's present in Alabama's mind I think it could take some of that pressure off of them um but I will say the same thing exists for Tennessee they can lose this game and still easily make the playoffs it just means that whomever loses this game no longer has the luxury of maybe being able to lose in the SEC Championship game and still go to the playoffs that's all I'll say I think that's an opportunity for Alabama to be a little more relaxed in this game but I want to see them put it all together on the road before I think they're going to cover a seven and a half against Tennessee and I wouldn't be surprised if Tennessee won this one I think that's all fair uh the difficult thing really comes down to trying to gauge where Tennessee's at defensively where Alabama's at offensively I think you know what Tennessee's offense versus Alabama's defense looks like you know uh it's possible to score on Alabama's defense I think it's extremely hard I think it's as hard as it was to score on Georgia last year I think Tennessee is better offensively I think Alabama I don't know if they're quite quite as good as Georgia was last year defensively but in terms of past defense they might be as good or better um we've talked about a lot where those statistics are at you know 70 of opponent passing averages an elite number 55 of opponent rushing averages is an elite number it's hard to score so I think in reality this number of 36 that's by Tennessee is unrealistic one thing I decided to do was to go back and try to adjust for these sort of weird happenstance things that have happened in the last week and the weirdness that was in the model so I went back and I looked at a data from a week ago I said okay let's throw out the LSU game for Tennessee because remember LSU went into that game having lost their left tackle that morning and their left guard in the first quarter and that caused LSU's Run game to completely crater they were held under two yards of carry that was a run first team I don't know that that's really an accurate depiction of what Tennessee is as a football team and I think that really skews their numbers and on the other hand Alabama look they're not going to be the same offense than they were last week with Jalen Mill Road they're just not even if you think bryshong is you know 85 of what he was before again they're going to make those routine plays they're going to have some semblance of a passing game they're just going to be a different offense and so I did that first off and then my next question was okay but let let's also assume that let's just say for the sake of argument Tennessee played this 85 Chicago Bears they held them to two yards per play they got three points out of the game so I gave them this basically low yardage Baseline and I should say I didn't affect any of the production stats for Tennessee I only did this for training the model about how to evaluate scores basically how do you take production and turn it into a score that part of it I basically gave it an anchor and held it to the bottom and said this is what happens when they don't get any yardage and the fascinating thing there is it changes the score pretty dramatically it between those two things it makes it Alabama 34 Tennessee 18. and I think that says a lot about how big the picture difference was from last week to this week Alabama's viewed as seven to ten points worse Tennessee's viewed as something like 10 points better than they were maybe 20 points better than they were and when I went back and did that exercise it did convince me uh along with I'll say from explosiveness metrics if you start looking at APA based metrics Tennessee has an explosiveness rating on offense of 1.24 and it's 1.69 in the passing game their explosiveness defensive rating allowed 1.35 actually higher than their offensive rating their passing rating allowed is almost exactly the same 1.65 versus 1.69 in other words Tennessee's defense is as apt to give up an explosive play as they are to create one and take it all together with how good I think Alabama's passing game is I actually think Alabama might probably cover in this game I think it's tough I think Tennessee is going to score some points certainly but I'm gonna go with Alabama 34 Tennessee 24. my confidence level is minimal as it has to be with a banged up quarterback but when I really dug into it and I started trying to filter for all the noise and junk in these data sets um really just taking out the last week and the results of an LSU team that I think was absolutely crippled in a Texas A M team that was playing above their heads with healthy players against tobacco quarterback suddenly this starts to look a lot more like you thought it was going to look like and I think we're probably overreacting a lot to last week's game again basically of the 14 possessions that Alabama played six were left left empty due to circumstance Miss field goal or turnover that's not really a realistic thing to be repeated on top of their normal offensive performance so yeah I think Alabama wins and I think Alabama probably covers uh and I I think it's really going to come down to Alabama's defense more than their offense but I think Tennessee still their defense is shaky enough they're going to let Alabama operate as long as they have competent quarterback play and I just don't think they can keep pace interestingly enough um we're both picking Alabama to not cover because the line opened at seven and has already moved to seven and a half I will say this we're making a lot of assumptions here one I have Alabama by 10. so oh well then there you go um I didn't write it down I wasn't paying attention um we're making a lot of assumptions here one being that is going to play and be healthy enough to not be affected like he's still gonna if that D Ball's open he's gonna be able to exploit it they're not gonna be able to run single safety all day and really stop the run um we're assuming that that 60 mid 60s percentage against opponents allowed is a little bit of a false number for Tennessee um and we are assuming that Alabama's Road woes are a thing of the past so Tennessee fans are going to say in the comments man y'all are given a lot of benefit of the doubt in Alabama and you're right we are and maybe it's just because of the history not of this series but just of the history of Alabama in general any one of those three things rears its ugly head for Alabama Tennessee probably wins this game um I'm just assuming that that those things are sorted out um it's it's a road game in a crazy atmosphere I pump up Beaver Stadium a lot and say that's a great place to watch football game Tennessee is going to be as loud as as Beaver Stadium as the shoe as LSU would have been maybe last week if it was a night game so um Bama better be ready better be ready to not be doing long checks of the line things like that um all right let us know in the school in the in the comments what you think the score is gonna be make sure Tennessee fans because we haven't been on you too much in the past we're here now we're talking about you make sure if you haven't yet like subscribe notification Bell but also before you go in the comments tell us that score tell us how bad you're gonna beat Bama and we'll mix it up with you thanks so much y'all have a great week and God bless [Music]

Channel: College Football Nerds

Views: 23,290

Keywords: alabama vs tennessee, ut, bama, alabama football, tennessee football, ut football, gameday, preview, prediction, hype, highlights, college football, espn, rankings, top 25, jalen milroe, bryce young injury, jalen milroe vs texas a&m, alabama vs texas a&m highlights, nick saban, josh heupel

Id: sbiz1Aa2LQw

Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2022