That's my early thinking. Florida has more tools at their disposal and a similar offensive attack. UT shut them down.
Although I expected our defense to struggle against WVU, I did not anticipate the extent of the struggle. We can't get people off the field. UT's offense has problems, but I worry that our defense can provide some healing.
For those reasons, my instincts say UT will beat us.
I'm about 50/50 right now. Unfortunately they play Ohio and we play Ball State, so we aren't likely to learn anything new before game time.
I think that I think their defense is really good. But then I look at UCLA. Not sure what to make of them (they haven't exactly lit up their other two opponents....359 yards against both San Diego State and Kansas State), and they won at Tennessee.
Florida, while there was no blow out, was one fumble away from taking a 24 point lead at what would have been 30-6. Florida played conservative, no question, and did run for 200+ yards (4.7 yards per carry). And that average per carry is pretty true, meaning, they didn't have any 80 yard run that skews it. In fact, they only had three runs over 15 yards, and none over 25 yards.
That leads me to believe that we may be able to run on the Vols. If we can, I think we win, because I'm not scared of an offensive shootout with them. If we can run, we will score points, and if we score over 24 points, we win.
The scary thing though, is if they can run on us the way they ran on Florida at times, we may be in trouble a bit too. So, will they be able to? They got into a rhythm a few times against Florida, but still finished with only 117 yards and 3.7 ypc. Against UCLA they were worse, 115 yards and only 2.6 yards per carry.
As I'm writing this...I'm moving to 55/45 Auburn wins...because I simply think we will be able to run a little better than they will, and if it comes to passing, I actually think we have an advantage there too (assuming Todd doesn't throw 14 picks off his back foot to Eric Berry).
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