Tennessee - Northern Illinois Preview

When you take a close look at this Northern Illinois football team, one thing stands out. Their opening game nail biter with Minnesota was a lot closer than expected and the Gophers survived the upset by scoring with 22 seconds left in the game. I know you may be thinking, who is Minnesota? Well, the Gophers are 5-1 with their only loss coming at the hands of Ohio State by a score of 34-21. Northern Illinois is 2-2 with their other loss coming to Western Michigan.  

If this were the 90’s I would say that Tennessee could name the score in this one, but this is not the 90’s and this isn’t the Tennessee team of old. It is not a team that can show up and expect a victory. The Vols are facing major issues with penalties, making “bone head” plays, in the words of former Vol Peyton Manning, and most notably, they have obvious issues at the quarterback position. 

It has been 8 years since the Vols changed starting quarterbacks this late in the season. In 2000 Tennessee benched A. J. Suggs in favor of Casey Clausen, and the Vols consequently went on a season ending winning streak before losing in the Cotton Bowl to Kansas State. No one is predicting a prolonged winning streak this year with a change at quarterback, but there is at least now some excitement about tonight’s game. Vol fans are anxiously awaiting the debut of Nick Stephens and will be watching intently as he makes his first start against the Huskies.  

My question is this, if the coaching staff is correct when evaluating talent on the practice field, then how much better will the Big Orange offense be, just because a change has been made at quarterback? No one knows how the offense will perform with Stephens under center, but one thing is for sure, it can’t get much worse.

Jonathan Crompton is 13^th in the Southeastern conference in the weekly pass efficiency ratings, and has only completed 52% of his passes. The Vols are averaging 340 yards per game total offense, and only averaging 19.2 points per game. Northern Illinois by contrast is scoring 34.5 points per game albeit it has not come against such competition as Florida and Auburn.  

The Vol defense has been a little better than expected, and I expect that they will continue to get better now that Ben Martin is getting playing time, and Gerald Williams looks to be a playmaker.  

In short, I look for Tennessee to get back to “pounding the rock” with Monterio Hardesty, and shake it up from time to time with some play action by Stephens. No one really knows how much Crompton’s injured ankle has hampered his play this year, but he has been seen hobbling around on more than one occasion. If Stephens is healthy and can effectively execute play action, the Vol offense should see some success moving the ball.  

Prediction: Tennessee 27 Northern Illinois 10