Welcome back! The Fearless Prediction returns for yet another season on Saturday Down South.
After 9 months of traveling to such scenic locales as Rome, Paris and Utica (the Paris of upstate New York), it’s time to get back to business.
It is so good to see the return of college football. I mean… actual college football. The vast majority of recent college football discussions have had very little to do with the actual sport. NIL. Congressional action. Congressional inaction. Transfers. Players in the pros for some reason being allowed to (maybe?) play in college.
But now, we can discuss the important things, like how Tennessee is going to perform now that true freshman Faizon Brandon has been anointed the starting quarterback in the season opener against Furman.
This doesn’t happen often.
The Vols haven’t started a true freshman in the season opener since Brent Schaeffer got the nod in the 2004 kickoff against UNLV. Brandon beat out redshirt freshman George MacIntyre for the job.
Brandon committed to Tennessee before his junior year at Grimsley HS in Greensboro, North Carolina. He’s a winner, losing only one of his 36 career high-school starts. He also led his team to back-to-back Class 4A state championships.
Having an inexperienced signal caller will be quite the change for this Vols offense. In 2025, Joey Aguilar was Tennessee’s starting QB, which was his 7th season in college football. The good news is that there are a lot of playmakers around Brandon to ease the transition.
Two of the top returning wide receivers in the SEC will start for the Vols. Junior Mike Matthews caught 53 passes for 813 yards and 4 TDs last season. Braylon Staley had 71 receptions for 858 yards and 6 TDs in 2025, when he was named SEC Freshman of the Year. In the backfield, Brandon can hand off to senior DeSean Bishop, who rushed for 1,076 yards on 182 carries and 16 TDs last season. Throw in a lot of experience on the offensive line and Brandon is set up for early success.
Defensively the Vols have to be better than they were a year ago… right?
Jim Knowles takes over as defensive coordinator, replacing Tim Banks, who was fired after the 2025 season. Knowles was most recently the DC at Penn State, and before that the defensive coordinator for Ohio State. Vols fans remember the 42-17 throttling UT got from Knowles and the Buckeyes in the 2024 College Football Playoff game. Maybe Tennessee will be dishing it out a lot more now that Knowles is on the Vols’ side.
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The Vols’ best defensive player is linebacker Arion Carter, who will miss the Furman game while serving his NCAA suspension for taking a $427 flight from an agent (a cost he paid back after he decided not to enter the NFL Draft). Originally the NCAA suspended him for 3 games, UT got it pled down to 2 games, and the public outcry was so massive the NCAA reduced it again. In an era when student-athletes are making millions, this feels ridiculous, but it is yet another chapter in the Tennessee/NCAA rivalry.
There are a lot of new faces on this Tennessee defense, including transfer redshirt sophomore NT Xavier Gilliam, who followed Knowles from Penn State. The sooner the newcomers and returning players jell, the better this defense will be.
As for Furman… the Paladins already have a game under their belt, a 20-3 win over Division II Anderson (SC). QB Jake Garcia threw for 183 yards and ran for 51 in the victory. If the name sounds familiar, it should. Now in his 6th season of college football, Garcia has had a wild ride. He started 9 games in 2 years at Miami, then transferred to Mizzou for a year, but didn’t play. Then came a season at East Carolina, followed by a year at Michigan, and now he’s finishing his college career at Furman.
Well, we think this is his final season. This is college football in 2026 and there are apparently no rules anymore.
Dartmouth transfer Daniel Haughton was Garcia’s top target in the season-opening victory. Haughton had 5 catches for 87 yards in that game. Sophomore C.J. Nettles ran for 99 yards. Ben Croasdale had 2 TD runs. Defensively, safety Eli Lipscomb had 6 tackles with 3 TFLs and a sack against Anderson.
Tennessee would like to get its starters out of this game as quickly as possible with what could be a tricky trip to Georgia Tech coming up next week. Even though kickoff temperatures will be in the low to mid-90s, yet another sellout crowd of over 100,000 fans will pack Neyland Stadium for this one.
Fearless Prediction: Tennessee 55, Furman 6
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Mark Nagi has covered Tennessee athletics for over 20 years. He is the author of “Decade of Dysfunction,” an in-depth look at all that led to the crazy coaching search of 2017 at Tennessee. The book is available on Amazon.
