2018 Tennessee Volunteers Season Win Total Picks and Predictions for NCAA Football

2017 Record: 4-8

2018 Las Vegas Season Win Total: 5.5

2018 Season Win Total Picks NCAA Football: 'Under'

The Butch Jones Era came to a comical, predictable end last season after a 4-8 debacle of a campaign. Jones and the Vols spent back-to-back years failing to live up to their trendy "sleeper" designation and are now a woeful 57-56 in the nine years since cutting Philip Fulmer loose.

Enter Jeremy Pruitt, former national title-winning defensive coordinator for both Florida State (2013) and Alabama (2017), with a stop at Georgia in between. Pruitt will attempt a ground-up rebuild of this sorry program. He will use this as a bridge season to buy some time to get his own recruits coming down the pipe.

The Volunteers aren't completely devoid of talent. Jones did a decent job of bringing in guys that could play. He just couldn't coach them. Scheme changes by Pruitt - who has never had a head coaching job - may or may not be able to change the Vols' underachieving ways.

Tennessee has six returning starters on both sides of the ball. But this is still an extremely young team. They have just five projected senior starters and just one guy, safety Micah Abernathy, has started for multiple years.

Pruitt and the Vols did score a major coup this offseason when they landed graduate transfer Keller Chryst. The former Stanford starter offers a steady veteran hand compared to the two overmatched now-sophomore quarterbacks, Jarrett Guarantano and Will McBride. Chryst is coming from a winning program. And laying that attitude and foundation will be just as important as production.

Pruitt has plenty of highly-rated recruits to work with on the defensive side of the ball. And because that's where his background lies, you can only expect that the Vols will be better on that side of the ball.

Tennessee's defense will be thrown into the fire in the opener against an explosive West Virginia offense. But after that Pruitt will have some time to settle things in games against ETSU and UTEP.

But then Tennessee won't win a game for another month. They host Florida, play at Georgia, play at Auburn, host Alabama and then play at South Carolina. The Vols should be double-digit underdogs in all five of those games.

November offers some promise. And that month should give us a glimpse of what Tennessee's future holds. They have three straight home games and then close on the road against Vanderbilt. If they can win all four of those games then Tennessee could become an unlikely bowl team.

But I don't see that happening. I think the Vols will put up a good fight. And they should be better against the spread than their 7-18 ATS mark he past two seasons. But I don't see six wins on this schedule. Instead, I think Pruitt will lay some track this year and Tennessee will be a team on my radar in 2019.

Robert Ferringo has been the top football handicapper in the country the past seven years, earning nearly $28,000 in total football profit. He has also posted seven of nine winning seasons (including back-to-back winning years) and produced 26 of 41 winning football months and an amazing 45 of 70 winning football months over the past decade. Robert has eight of 10 winning NFL preseasons and he is at nearly 60 percent winners over his last 900 totals picks. Also, Robert's proprietary KING College Football Betting System has posted three of five winning seasons. Robert is looking for a third straight winning football year and wants more profit this fall. SIGN UP HERE TODAY AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OUR 3-FOR-1 FOOTBALL SPECIALS!

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