Tennessee at South Carolina
Saturday, October 24, 2026
3:30 PM ET, Williams-Brice Stadium, Columbia
South Carolina is a 2.5-point favorite with a total of 50.5, and my play is Tennessee +2.5.
Here’s a strange one. Tennessee just held Alabama to 201 yards, forced four turnovers, won 26-10, and climbed to No. 11. Its reward was a five-point swing in the betting line the wrong way. The Vols opened as 2.5-point favorites in Columbia. Now they’re getting 2.5 against a 3-3 team. I get why. Letdown spot, hostile road crowd, opponent off a bye, quarterback questions. But when the market piles every narrative onto one side, I start looking at the other one, and the numbers point straight back at Tennessee.
Jim Knowles brought the hammer to Knoxville
This Tennessee defense is the best unit on the field, and it isn’t close. The Vols allow 14.7 points a game and rank fourth nationally in EPA per play allowed, a stat that measures how much each snap moves the needle toward points. Opponents average 4.4 yards a play against them, compared with 5.6 against South Carolina. Shane Beamer has been game-planning against Jim Knowles defenses since his assistant days at Virginia Tech and Oklahoma, and he sounded like a man who has seen this movie before. “He was a nightmare,” Beamer said Tuesday. “He’s as good as they come.” Even when teams get close, Tennessee holds up. Opponents score on 73.7 percent of their red-zone trips against the Vols, versus 92.9 percent against the Gamecocks.
LaNorris Sellers is the problem, no doubt. He threw four touchdowns and ran for another in a 38-19 rout at Florida, and he’s thrown for 1,338 yards with 411 more on the ground. When he’s on, he can beat anybody. He’s also completing 61.5 percent of his passes, and South Carolina sits 109th in turnover margin. Against a defense that just took the ball away from Alabama four times, those are the cracks that open up.
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Tennessee only has to be boring
Josh Heupel won’t name a starter, but George MacIntyre is expected to make his third straight start, and he’s 2-0 since replacing Faizon Brandon. MacIntyre won’t win this with his arm. He’s thrown three picks in two starts, and Tennessee ranks 119th in EPA per pass. He doesn’t need to win it with his arm, though. The Vols run on almost 60 percent of their snaps and rank fifth in EPA per rush. South Carolina’s defense, meanwhile, ranks 107th in EPA allowed per play and 120th against the pass. Beamer even said it himself: “Two teams, us and them, that both want to run the ball.” The difference is that Tennessee’s defense is built to stop it, and the Vols can grind out four-minute drives while Sellers watches from the sideline.
That’s also why I’m taking the points instead of chasing the total. Tennessee games have gone under six times in seven tries. In a lower-scoring game, 2.5 points matters, and the Vols’ plus-money moneyline (+105 to +115) is a reasonable alternative if you think they win outright, which I do.
What could go wrong. Williams-Brice is where the No. 5 Vols got blindsided in 2022. The Gamecocks hung 63 on them that night, and Heupel brought it up to his team this week. South Carolina expects back defensive tackle Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy, edge Julian Walker and center Carter Miller, who all missed the Florida game, plus corner Judge Collier, who left it early. Tennessee is also playing for the eighth straight Saturday while the Gamecocks rested. If MacIntyre turns it over early and the crowd takes over, Sellers is the kind of player who can turn a game in three plays. But South Carolina is 1-3 against the spread at home and 1-3 as a favorite, and I’d rather take the better defense with nearly a field goal’s worth of cushion.
Projected score: Tennessee 24, South Carolina 20. Knowles gets one more takeaway than Columbia can afford, and the Vols leave with the win.
The Pick: Tennessee +2.5
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