The hype machine around Tennessee turned on before last season was even over.

Before the 45-6 annihilation of Northwestern in the Outback Bowl capped a six-game winning streak to finish the year, many had pegged the Vols as the team to beat in the SEC East in 2016.

We won’t have to wait very long before we can validate that assessment. That’s because Butch Jones and Tennessee will play all five of their toughest games of the season before their bye week rolls around on Oct. 22.

Here’s a look at Tennessee’s schedule:

Sept. 3 — vs. Appalachian State
Sept. 10 — vs. Virginia Tech (Bristol Motor Speedway)
Sept. 17 — vs. Ohio
Sept. 24 — vs. Florida
Oct. 1 — at Georgia
Oct. 8 — at Texas A&M
Oct. 15 — vs. Alabama
Oct. 22 — Open
Oct. 29 — at South Carolina
Nov. 5 — vs. Tennessee Tech
Nov. 12 — vs. Kentucky
Nov. 19 — vs. Missouri
Nov. 26 — at Vanderbilt

If you just got déjà vu, there’s a reason. Last season, the Vols faced a similarly front-loaded schedule, and they started 3-4 before sweeping every game from Halloween onward.

It doesn’t look much different in 2016.

Tennessee will be tested by its two chief SEC East competitors in Florida and Georgia, plus its daunting cross-division rival Alabama, in that span. The Vols will also be faced with a tricky neutral site game against Virginia Tech in Week 2 and a trip to College Station in Week 6.

It’s not as if you can take any SEC game lightly, but the discrepancy between the team’s first seven games and its last five is night and day.

Here’s a breakdown of just how big the difference is based on how those two sets of opponents fared last season:

CATEGORY TEAMS BEFORE BYE TEAMS AFTER BYE
Combined W-L 68-26 21-38
Combined win pct .723 .356
Bowl teams 7 0
First-year coaches 2 3

Each of the seven schools that Tennessee faces in the first portion reached a bowl game last season. That includes Appalachian State and Ohio, who coincidentally played against each other in the Camellia Bowl with the Mountaineers eking out a 31-29 victory.

That victory saw Appalachian State set a record for the most wins by a team in its first season as a full-fledged member of the FBS (2014 was a transition year despite the team competing in the Sun Belt).

Dual-threat quarterback Taylor Lamb leads the Mountaineers offense. He set the school single-season record for TD passes last season with 31.

Those contests sandwich a game against Virginia Tech and first-year head coach Justin Fuente from Memphis. The “Battle at Bristol” has the potential of setting an all-time attendance record since the racetrack has a capacity of 160,000. (The current record is 115,109 — Notre Dame at Michigan in 2013.)

Tennessee’s official Twitter account posted this all the way back in January to show the work that’s already being done there to host the game.

The Vols and Hokies will be playing under the “Colossus” four-sided video board, which is expected to be the world’s largest, permanent, center-hung video display board. It will be suspended from cables above the speedway infield for races, football games and other events.

Needless to say, the hoopla from that game, mixed with the quality of the opponent, should give the Vols all they can handle.

On Sept. 24, Tennessee gets the SEC slate started with a game against Florida, which holds an 11-game winning streak in the series. The Vols follow that up with back-to-back road games at Georgia and Texas A&M before facing defending national champion Alabama in Neyland Stadium.

Phew.

After the much-needed break comes, Tennessee will face the four bottom-dwellers in its division, which also happened to be the four worst teams in the entire SEC last year. South Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt finished with a combined 6-26 mark in league play in 2015, and half of those teams have new head coaches.

That’s accompanied by a game against FCS opponent Tennessee Tech, which went 4-7 and 3-5 in the Ohio Valley Conference last season. Oh, and the Golden Eagles will be led by first-year coach Marcus Satterfield, the former offensive coordinator at offensively challenged Temple.

Are the Vols for real? You won’t be waiting long for the answer.