Tennessee is a Hail Mary and a botched fourth down conversion away from being 8-0 this season.

The Vols are 6-2 with two losses by a combined six points.

Tennessee wasn’t the better team on the day they lost to Texas in late September, but the Vols were certainly a better team than South Carolina this past weekend.

But Tennessee had too many self-inflicted wounds and they gifted the Gamecocks a 27-24 win.

Both losses provided plenty of reason for frustration for fans. A couple of untimely penalties and missed assignments are the difference in being 6-2 and 8-0.

But while the losses are frustrating, Tennessee still controls its own destiny, and that’s the silver lining that Tennessee athletic director Danny White is holding on to.

“Other than the outcome of the game (against Texas), and it was frustrating because I thought that we played well enough to win it in a lot of ways,” said White on WNML’s SportsTalk. “Really in both of our losses, I think we played well enough to win it. We’ve got a young team. We’re growing.

“If you have a young team that’s growing, and if you peak at the right time, who knows? You might contend for it all. We’ve seen teams like that Ohio State team we played in the playoffs a few years back. They had two losses (and then won it all).”

A lot of people are already writing the obituary of the 2026 Tennessee Volunteers because of the loss to South Carolina.

Maybe those people will be right. But there’s a lot of season left to play. Tennessee has a lot of youth playing in some key spots this season. And that youth is going to continue to improve each week. We don’t know the full story of this team just yet, so maybe we should hold off on the final judgment until the story is complete.