Texas A&M has opened as a shockingly small underdog to the Tennessee Volunteers, with Big Orange being favored by only 2.5 points according to FanDuel in this upcoming weekend's game. This is eye-catching for several reasons, chief of which is that the Aggies are currently 4-5 while the Volunteers are 7-2 and coming off of an emphatic win over top-10 Kentucky.
It's not like the Aggies are outright favored, but given the mood around each program right now, you'd be forgiven for feeling like A&M should be something like a double-digit underdog— but it's a gap of not even three points right now. Does Vegas know something that we don't, or is this simply more unearned confidence in the Aggies?
A&M has inarguably played far below their talent level so far this year; this is one of the most star-studded rosters in the nation from a recruiting standpoint, but they simply haven't put it together so far this season. That makes for a pretty dangerous team in a lot of ways; they have the ability to jump up and bite you when you're not expecting it if they can just put things together for 60 minutes.
Texas A&M is a surprisingly small underdog to Tennessee, but there's a reason for it
This is also a tricky spot for the Volunteers. The win over Kentucky was not only big on the scoreboard, it was huge from an emotional perspective; though it's nothing like Tennessee-Alabama, for example, there is a lot of history and a definite rivalry between those two schools. That puts them in a bit of a letdown spot— and they also might be looking ahead to their game against 6-3 LSU the following week up in Neyland.
Combine that with the fact that Tennessee has simply not been a great road team this year, and you start to get a fuller picture of things. The Vols barely scraped by Arkansas in Fayetteville earlier this season, and they outright lost to South Carolina in Williams Brice a few weeks back.
Of course, the Aggies just did the same, though the circumstances were far different. But this will be a much-anticipated return home for Texas A&M after just under a month away from Kyle Field, and it is also the annual blackout game (though it will be kicking off at 2 PM central, annoyingly).
In other words, it's going to be the most intimidating environment that the Volunteers have played in, and one of the most talented teams they've played against as well (only Texas and Alabama rank higher among Tennessee opponents on 247Sports' Team Talent Composite for this year). This is setting up to be a perfect storm for an upset over a prospective top-10 team for the Aggies— but we can't put the cart before the horse.
A&M is going to have to play their best game if they want a chance to pull the upset here. Tennessee brings one of the best defenses in the country to Kyle Field, and they're challenging an offense that has been on the struggle bus all year— one that just failed to score a single touchdown for the third time this season.
Even so, there are reasons to believe that the Aggies can do this. This will be an extremely intriguing storyline to follow this week— we'll see how the line trends throughout the next six days.
Add us as a preferred source on Google