National media outlet predicts which games the Tennessee Vols will lose during the 2025 college football season
The Tennessee Vols likely need to win 10 games in the regular season in 2025 in order to reach the College Football Playoff for a second straight season. And that's exactly what CBS Sports thinks the Vols will do this fall. Earlier this week, CBS Sports predicted how many games each program in the SEC […]
The Tennessee Vols likely need to win 10 games in the regular season in 2025 in order to reach the College Football Playoff for a second straight season.
And that's exactly what CBS Sports thinks the Vols will do this fall.
Earlier this week, CBS Sports predicted how many games each program in the SEC will win in 2025. And they have Tennessee finishing the regular season with 10 wins.
The two games that CBS Sports has the Vols losing?
Alabama and Florida (both games are on the road).
Which means that CBS Sports thinks Tennessee will get their first win against Georgia since the miracle in Athens in 2016.
From CBS Sports: This is an incredibly difficult pick, so I'm not sure I would touch this win total if I were a betting man. I believe the margin for error is wide for the Volunteers this fall — wider than LSU and Ole Miss — which makes me hesitate. Even so, I'm high on Rocky Top this offseason. I love Nico Iamaleava, and though he faces immense pressure with an $8 million NIL deal, he has the talent to excel in Josh Heupel's offense this fall. Plus, the defense is set to continue its top-10 finishes with 67% of its production returning, according to ESPN's SP+.
Oh, and that schedule is conducive to a double-digit win season. The Vols get Georgia and Oklahoma at home and travel to Alabama and Florida. We'll go with an upset win against Georgia to push the Vols to 10 victories. There's a wide spread here, and four losses are not out of the question, either.
CBS Sports notes that this is a "difficult pick", but I'm not sure there's an "easy" pick in the SEC. The conference is as competitive as ever from top to bottom. We saw last season that any team can lose on any given Saturday (just ask Alabama after losing to Vanderbilt in 2024).
The Vols, however, certainly have the potential to reel off another 10 win regular season (which would be Josh Heupel's third at Tennessee). And I'm sure Tennessee's players will have plenty of motivation in 2025 after a blowout season-ending loss to Ohio State last year in Columbus.
