Could Arkansas be the biggest game on UT's schedule?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this — not with a game against Arkansas serving as a de facto litmus test on the Jeremy Pruitt regime.

Year 3 began with high expectations. Tennessee went 8-5 in 2019, and if the Vols were expected to compete with Georgia and Florida for the top spots of the SEC, there was no reason to think they wouldn’t be at the top of the rest of the division. The Vols began the season ranked 25th in the initial AP poll, after all.

And meanwhile Arkansas, well, its continuing rebuild was going to be ugly.

There was new coach Sam Pittman, the 3rd head man in 4 seasons at the school. Arkansas was 1-23 against the SEC during that span, with a 2017 win over Ole Miss being the only thing keeping a Razorback senior class from having never seen an SEC win.

Their quarterback was Florida castoff Feleipe Franks. Their division was the toughest in football. In our preseason look around the league, 5 of our writers picked Arkansas to finish last in the West. The outlier picked them to finish 6th.

And now SEC Week 7 finds UT playing at Arkansas. The schools sport identical 2-3 records, and UT is a 1.5 point favorite per the current Vegas point spread. For that matter, ESPN’s FPI projects the Razorbacks as a mild favorite. How did this happen?

Well, for UT, a 2-0 start has been followed by a trio of beatings by Georgia, Kentucky, and Alabama by a combined score of 126-45. That 8-game winning streak is a distant memory.

Arkansas has its own big loss to Georgia, but since then, the Razorbacks have knocked off both Mississippi schools, lost to Auburn by 2 points after a blown call, and had a respectable 11-point loss to No. 8 Texas A&M.

Arkansas ranks ahead of Tennessee is scoring offense, scoring defense and a bevy of other stats. The Razorbacks are first in the SEC in turnover margin (UT is 8th). Arkansas is 3rd in the SEC in red-zone offense and 2nd in red-zone defense (UT is 8th and 12th).

The bottom line is this: Tennessee is rebuilding. On some level, the Vols have been rebuilding since Phil Fulmer’s next-to-last team won the East in 2007. That was the Vols’ fifth East championship in the first 16 seasons of SEC divisional play. UT hasn’t been back to the SEC championship since. The Vols are nearing the point where recruiting classes will be made entirely of players who can’t remember when UT was a premier program in the SEC and the nation.

Patience is a big sell in Pruitt’s 3rd season.

After all, it took Mark Stoops 5 years to get Kentucky into bowl games and 7 years to lead the Wildcats to a 10-win season. Gus Malzahn is in Year 8 of trying to keep Auburn over the hump. Kirby Smart is in Year 5 in Athens.

But at the same time, Dan Mullen took Florida from 4 wins to 10 and 11 in his first 2 years. Ed Orgeron finished off a season, then led LSU to 9, 10, and 15 wins (granted, he’s having a 2020 to forget). In his 3rd year, Jimbo Fisher has Texas A&M in the top 10.

And then there’s Sam Pittman. It won’t bode well for Pruitt, who is now 9-12 in the SEC, to be lapped by the rookie coach in the program where the last SEC victory before this season was a distant memory.

It’s hard to sell that rebuilding in Knoxville should take appreciably longer (and that the ride should be much bumpier) than rebuilding in Fayetteville.

No doubt, 2020 has been a bizarre season. Nobody is on the hot seat. And 3 years — for most coaches — is too soon to even think about pulling the plug.

That said, a loss Saturday does make it pretty fair to question the trajectory of Tennessee football. With A&M, Auburn, and Florida still on the schedule, UT would be staring a 3-7 season in the eye. Vols fans, by and large, are patient. They understand the nature of rebuilding. But their patience would take a significant dent if the Vols don’t take care of business Saturday.

In 2020, at Arkansas might be the most important game on UT’s schedule. Believe it.