Advanced Stats: Texas A&M Football vs. Tennessee Too Close to Call

Texas A&M Football vs. Tennessee Advanced Stats Projections

Headed into a pivotal matchup in Neyland this weekend, Texas A&M football is coming off of a disappointing week and hoping to turn things around before the bye week. A lot of narrative power rests on this week’s result, and so coming out of Knoxville with a win would be huge. Let’s see what different advanced statistical systems project to happen in this key game.

SP+: Texas A&M football vs. Tennessee a virtual toss-up

SP+, Bill Connelly’s proprietary system built primarily on success rate and explosiveness metrics, sees this as an extremely close game. His numbers have this one as a 2-point Tennessee victory, with a 55% confidence that the Vols will win. That’s just about the point value of home field advantage, so these are truly two evenly-matched teams according to his numbers. Whenever the projection has the game within three points, though, one play can change the outcome in a hurry. Those kinds of plays were nowhere to be found for the Aggies last week, but hopefully they can do so in this contest.

CFB Graphs: Texas A&M football a slight underdog

Parker Fleming of CFB Graphs, who runs an EPA-based model, has Tennessee as about 3.5 points better in this one, with about a 59% chance to win. That, again, is very close to simply the home field advantage adjustment, which he does factor in. Fleming’s projections operate on matchups, and his numbers show that the areas to watch will be starting field position for the Aggies, which team has a better ability to convert quality drives into points, whether A&M can find success on early downs, the Aggies’ ability to run the ball with consistency, and whether Tennessee can find success on late downs. If the Aggies win more of these matchups than they lose, they will be in good shape.

FEI: highest of the three on Tennessee

Brian Fremeau’s FEI ratings, based on a net points per drive model, likes the Vols over the Ags by about 4.5 points, giving Tennessee about a 62% chance to win. His numbers project this one to be about a 29-25 game when all is said and done (so considering normal scoring intervals for football, perhaps somewhere around 30-27 or 27-23). His overall rankings have the Vols just slightly ahead of Texas A&M football, so with them playing at home, it makes sense that they would come out as the favorite in his projections.