Tennessee won’t have Arion Carter against Georgia Tech, but Yellow Jackets HC Brent Key just made things a little easier for the Vols
The Tennessee Volunteers will face a tough early season test in Week 2 against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
The Tennessee Vols will face a tough early-season test when they travel to Atlanta for a road matchup against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in Week 2 of the 2026 college football season.
And the Vols, because the NCAA is apparently holding a grudge against Tennessee, won’t have senior linebacker Arion Carter for the matchup.
Carter was suspended for the first two games of the season because of a $427 plane ticket (which he repaid).
Carter is one of the Vols’ most important team leaders and also one of the most experienced players on the defensive side of the ball. Not having him for a tough road matchup against a well-coached Georgia Tech team isn’t ideal for Tennessee.
The good news is the Volunteers have one of the deepest linebacker rooms in the nation.
The other piece of good news is that Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key has already revealed the Yellow Jackets’ offensive game plan for their early-season matchups against Colorado and Tennessee (Georgia Tech opens the season against Colorado).
Brent Key doesn’t want to put too much on junior quarterback Alberto Mendoza early in the season
Alberto Mendoza, the younger brother of former Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, will start at quarterback for Georgia Tech in 2026 after spending the first two seasons of his career at Indiana.
Mendoza has just 25 career pass attempts. He has a famous last name, but he’s short on experience.
As a result, Key made it clear in July that running the ball and the intermediate passing game will be part of the plan early in the season to take the pressure off Mendoza.
“How are you going to complement him on offense so you don’t put all the pressure on him early?” said Key to On3’s Andy Staples. “You don’t want that guy (Mendoza) out of the gate against Colorado and Tennessee, in those games, having to go win it by himself.
“Let’s take the pressure off of him. Let’s rely on the run game and the intermediate throws. Let’s improve ourselves in the passing game — which we had to improve on drastically, just from a situational passing standpoint. And let’s play really good defense to take that pressure off Alberto.”
Essentially, it sounds like Tennessee shouldn’t expect Georgia Tech to throw the ball down the field much. Instead, it sounds like the Yellow Jackets will do their best to turn this game into a grind-it-out, chew-up-the-clock kind of matchup.
Now, obviously it all comes down to execution. But Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles at least has an idea of what Georgia Tech plans to do — and he also knows the Yellow Jackets don’t really want to cut Mendoza loose early in the season — so that should make defensive game planning a little easier.
Linebacker play will be important in this game if that’s going to be Georgia Tech’s approach, which makes the loss of Carter hurt even more. But players like Jeremiah Telander, Amare Campbell, Edwin Spillman, and Jadon Perlotte are more than capable of filling that void.
