Syracuse Orange Week 1 preview: Taking on Tennessee

The Orange play the long awaited AFLAC Kickoff game in Tennessee on Saturday. What can we expect?

I’m coming to you semi-live from a Delta flight to Atlanta while editing up a long voice memo I dictated driving to a friend’s comic book store to preview Syracuse Tennessee. Amazing how you can keep busy even when barely employed.

On paper, this is going to be a massive task for the Orange if they want to start the season off 1-0. Tennessee is not projected to be a top 15 team in college football like last season, but they’re still fairly deep at every position and have some serious NFL talent (more on that later) along the trenches. Oddly, this isn’t even close to Syracuse’s toughest game this season as they still have true road contests with Clemson, Norte Dame and Miami this season, and that is just about as big of an indictment against this schedule as I bring.

Last season, the Vols were one of my hardest teams to read. They made the college football playoff, were consistently in the mix for the SEC regular season title and Championship Game, and took down their fair share of very good schools. They also lost enough games to only make an at large bid for the playoff before being decimated by eventual champions Ohio State. Their offense, which had been a track meet in Head Coach Josh Heupel’s early seasons morphed into more of a power running attack.

Yet despite that massive change and injuries along the offensive line, Tennessee was a competitive out all last season. Their two losses were a road upset to Arkansas and a road loss to Georgia, not unexpected, but not a blowout like in some past seasons. They also didn’t really blow anyone out in conference either due to that stylistic change, and it may be why so many people are ready to degree the Vols this year’s overrated SEC team.

The reason they are rated as a Top 25 team is the defensive line. I know Syracuse plays Clemson later this season, but this is probably the most talented defensive line Syracuse will face all season long. Not only is this a unit that is just NFL sized, this is also a line that is technically sound and will require a coordinated naturalization. How the Syracuse offensive line, filled with transfers and potential a true freshman in rotation, handles this challenge will largely determine if this game is competitive.

The biggest weakness for the Tennessee Volunteers? Is Joey Aguilar is going to be the starting quarterback that unlocks this offense? If the answer is yes, what is actually unlocking? There are very legitimate questions around what is the ideal Huepel offense after what we saw last year and its ability to win Tennessee tough SEC games. However, the issue for the Vols was that the offense mostly stuttered on the opponents side of the 50 yard line as they could not navigate with the condensed field.

Joey Aguilar is not a quarterback I think of as a small field surgeon, but he also ended up at Tennessee due to their fallout with Nico Iamaleava, and the former losing his job to the latter at UCLA. If this was in 2024, I would say that Tennessee might have been the winner in trading a five star prospect for the Appalachian State transfer. But last year, Aguilar still showed a willingness to take unnecessary risks at the expense of explosion while the Vols rode the running game. What kind of offense Tennessee chooses to run and its efficacy will be a story all season.

I think the most interesting part of this game is that run pass balance and how the Orange can contain either. Syracuse does not present as a team that you necessarily need to scheme around, but Elijah Robinson is shifting the defense more into his 4-2-5 vision instead of the 3-3-5 remnants from the Dino Babers era. Could we see more wrinkles and more aggression? Absolutely. I’m just not sure who on the defensive side of the ball can actually deliver against a team as talented as the Vols.

Look: it’s somewhat lazy to say that this game will be decided in the trenches, but it absolutely is a game where historically, Syracuse would lose early and often in the trenches and the game gets out of hand early. Fran Brown has a year of infusing DART into Syracuse Football and the Orange need to be detailed and tough if they want to stand up to the Vols on both sides of the ball.

So far, Week 0 and Week 1 games have started slow and sloppy. That kind of environment will benefit the Orange. Tennessee is far from perfect, but they have similar question marks as Syracuse so if you buy into one team’s issues, you have into the other side as well. I think that means that this first half may be something Syracuse wants: a rock fight that keeps the score close. However, I can’t really see a world in where the Volunteers don’t score at least 21, and I’m not sure the Orange offense can get there this week. Give me Tennessee 27-Syracuse 17.