Let's go. Tennessee Oklahoma. This is gonna be
a great game. Um I'm a huge fan of
Tennessee as you know, I moved them way up
in my poll. They're 6.5 point favorites on the
road at Oklahoma. There are so many good storylines
in this game, obviously with Josh Heel and Brent
Venables facing each other. Heel was the quarterback on
the team that won the national championship for Oklahoma under
Bob Stoops. When Brent Venables was the co defensive
coordinator of that game, there is a long history
between these two guys, these two programs, I'm
here for it. Even Josh Heel was trying to
say like, hey, you know, I think
out of respect, the fans are gonna be quiet
for me for what I've done. Yeah. Right
. Yeah. Right. I think that the Palace
on the Prairie is gonna be jumping. Uh There's
no doubt in my mind that place can get really
loud. I think it's going to be a very
difficult environment and then you start looking at this matchup
and the matchup is fascinating. It's fascinating. The
lion has moved around in this game from 7.5 earlier
. Now it's down to 6.5. Oklahoma in the
first five games or excuse me, Oklahoma in the
first few weeks, ha has been unimpressive on offense
and very impressive on defense. So they're starting to
take more of the identity of their head coach if
, if what they were under Lincoln Riley was strong
offense, weak defense. Now they're starting to be
strong defense, weak offense. We have not seen
them play very good offense and with the schedule in
front of them, you know, it ma it
makes me a little bit worried for them because they're
gonna have to score some points. This is the
first of five games remaining on that schedule for ou
against teams that are currently in the top seven of
the A P poll. Wild Brent Venables has a
horrendous schedule in front of him. How, by
the way, a little tangent here if you're Brent
Venables and, and anybody from ou, how do
you look at your schedule and then you look at
Missouri's schedule and you're like time out. Are we
in the same league? What is going on?
Look at those two scouts, pull them up,
pull them up. They're not in the same hemisphere
. One might as well be a group of five
schedule versus an NFL schedule. They are miles apart
. I think Georgia could say the same thing.
I think Florida could say the same thing. Those
three schools are looking at Missouri and being like,
are you serious? Are you serious? This is
why and I will maintain this. And I said
it in yesterday's episode, Missouri's record is going to
be better than their team. Meanwhile, Oklahoma's record
is gonna be worse than their team. And I
think that that starts this week. Heel's return to
Norman is gonna be fantastic. I'm here for it
, but the defense is incredibly difficult for ou.
So while I'd like to say that Tennessee is just
gonna roll out there and still be this number one
scoring offense in the country who also runs the football
by the way, they're running it for over 330
yards per game, which is third in the F
Bs so far, Dylan Sampson, their running back
, really good player as Nikko gets all the love
, Ia Malaya, Io Malaya, Io Malaya,
there we go. Niko, Io Malaya gets all
the love and maybe rightly so because he's the quarterback
, but this offense is balanced. I think it's
more balanced than even the 2022 version with Hindon Hooker
. And I think Io Maiava is actually a better
athlete than Hindon Hooker. And so he presents more
threats to the opposition. That's scary for the opposition
even for a really quality defense like Oklahoma now being
on the road and in his first true road environment
, that's gonna be a different story. I can
just attest to this firsthand playing in your very first
true road game is a vibe. I mean,
like it's a vibe. Neutral sites. Do not
get you ready for this. Not at all.
Um, quick story time. I played against Colorado
State for my very first start ever. It was
in Mile High Stadium. It was al close to
80,000 in the stadium, but it was split down
the middle and I thought my man, that environment
was inc was incredible. And so my very first
road start as a starter was at Kansas State.
I didn't think anything of it because I thought to
myself can't be bigger and, and you know,
more crazy than the Rocky Mountain showdown in Invesco field
. I was wrong. I was wrong. Your
first road start is a vibe and Nikko's gonna have
to deal with that. Ok, in particular,
in a matchup like this with all the hype surrounding
the game around it. I think it's gonna be
difficult. I expect Nikko to throw a pick early
in this game just because it's like this is different
. This is different. So watch out for that
. It's a good thing for Tennessee though. Their
defense is also strong so their defense can go out
there and play well, in particular against an offense
that has really struggled. I've been surprised that Jackson
Arnold has struggled the way that he has for Oklahoma
quarterback. They let Dylan Gabriel go. It's a
signal. It's like, hey, Jackson's gonna be
our guy. We wanna throw the football down the
field and maybe they're gonna be able to do that
more so because they've got Nick Anderson coming back,
their wide receiver who I think is a really good
wide receiver. I just haven't seen it. They
haven't thrown the football for over 200 yards yet.
Pick six, late last week against Tulane. Kind
of let Tulane back in the game. I'm like
, man, man. Meanwhile, the balls defense
, they haven't allowed a touchdown this season. They're
really good up front against an offensive line that's continuing
to shuffle O U's offensive line has five new starters
. They've been shuffling through this, this combination in
the first few weeks and they're trying to find it
. So they're searching and it's not a good place
to be to be searching against this defensive front and
against that quarterback and Niko, I ava, I
think that the Oklahoma defense has been great, but
they've been very opportunistic. They're gonna get a pick
early. I just feel that again, the environment
young quarterback first road start, but that's not gonna
be enough to sustain. I think it's a really
close game. I cannot in good conscience say that
that a kid in his first road start is gonna
go cover so I can't take the 6.5 in Tennessee
. I'm gonna say Tennessee wins this one by one
. Tennessee wins 2120 but Oklahoma covers the points again
. Look for a turnover or two from Nico and
then they overcome it because Oklahoma can't capitalize because that
offense is just not what we thought it could possibly 00:06:20.350 --> be.