Fearless Prediction: Tennessee vs. New Mexico State
By Mark Nagi
Published:
College football’s regular season is in its final stages, and the Fearless Prediction doesn’t plan on finishing with a slump. This week it’s Homecoming on The Hill, and Tennessee hopes to welcome alumni back with a win over New Mexico State.
The Vols are now sitting at 6-3, and the next 3 weeks will tell us a lot about how the 2025 Tennessee Volunteers will be remembered. We will talk more about the Florida and Vanderbilt games in the weeks to come, but for now let’s focus on the Aggies.
It’s been a rough season for New Mexico State. The Aggies currently are in 10th place in Conference USA with a 3-6 record, plus an 0-4 mark on the road. Senior QB Logan Fife is only completing 55% of his passes, and has 11 INTs to go with his 11 TD passes. Junior Donovan Faupel is his go-to guy in the passing game, with 43 grabs for 503 yards and 5 scores.
The Aggies will need to move the football through the air, because as a team they are ranked dead-last nationally when it comes to running the ball, averaging only 69.1 yards per game. Kadarius Calloway gets a little less than 10 carries a game and averages under 35 rushing yards per contest… and he leads the Aggies in rushing.
Defensively, lineman Ezra Christensen has 37 tackles and a team-high 6 sacks for the Aggies. Overall they are allowing 25.2 points per game, 77th best nationally.
As for the Vols, despite their struggles on offense in the loss to Oklahoma, they are still ranked 1st in the country in total offense at 504.1 yards per game, and ranked 3rd in scoring offense at 43.6 points per game. Seventh-year QB Joey Aguilar is making the most of his final season of eligibility, throwing for over 304 yards per game and 21 TD passes. Alabama’s Ty Simpson and Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia get more attention, but Aguilar is the top-rated QB in the SEC. If the Vols were sitting at 8-1 instead of 6-3, Aguilar would be getting a lot more publicity. Chris Brazzell II, Braylon Staley and Mike Matthews have become one the top trios of pass catchers in the nation, averaging a combined 238.8 receiving yards per game, with 17 total TDs.
Maybe one of the reasons for New Mexico State’s ineptitude on the ground is that Star Thomas is no longer in Las Cruces. Thomas spent 2 seasons (2022-2023) with the Aggies before transferring to Duke, and today is second on the Vols in rushing with 428 yards this season. DeSean Bishop is still at the top of the Vols’ chart in rushing with 690 yards.
Back in 2012, the Vols’ offense was one of the best in the country. That group, led QB Tyler Bray, WRs Cordarrelle Patterson, Justin Hunter, Zach Rogers, TE Mychal Rivera and RBs Raijon Neal and Marlin Lane, plus a bunch of offensive linemen who would play in the NFL, averaged over 36 points a game. But the Vols’ defense was dreadful, allowing 35.7 points per game, placing them 109th in the country. If they had a top-40 defense, that team probably goes 10-2 instead of 5-7.
In 2025, you can make a similar case because this is a Playoff-caliber Tennessee offense. However, Tennessee is ranked 97th in total defense (395.9 yards allowed per game) and 113th in scoring defense (31.1 points allowed per game). LB Arion Carter continues to fight through injury, leading the Vols with 63 tackles. But you wonder what this team would have looked like had cornerbacks Jermod McCoy and Rickey Gibson been on the field. Injuries have cost McCoy the entire season, while Gibson only played in the season opener.
This isn’t a great Tennessee team, but that won’t matter on Saturday.
Fearless Prediction: Tennessee 52, New Mexico State 10
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.
