Sorry for the bump. Stumbled on this via another board.

Lots of talk about the Transitive Property in this thread, which is usually a pretty shiet way of predicting games, but in the GT/UT case, we actually have a whole pile of shared opponents last year we can look at.

We both beat VT, and the games were pretty similar, in that VT wet the bed on turnovers against both of us.

We both beat UGA on the final play. I would argue our final play took a little less luck, but I'd call those outcomes similar.

We both beat Kentucky, in about the same fashion.

The shared opponent with different results was Vandy. GT 38-7, UT 34-45. There was a UT injury issue in this game that accounts for some of it, but as badly as we beat Vandy I think we could have still probably easily beaten them with a lot of 2nd stringers in.

Both teams were 9-4. GT actually did a lot better against the SEC East last year (3-0) than we did in our own ACC division (3-3), so chances are good that if GT was in the SEC East we would have placed ahead of Tennessee in 2016. Maybe not by much though, it would be tight.

We both return a majority of our starters, and we both lost a dynamic QB that our offense revolved around. GT's replacement has some quality experience, including one start, but he's going to have to make some big improvements in his game to be as good as Justin Thomas was.

On paper, this thing looks dead even to me. It's probably going to come down to how much time UT spent in the spring prepping against the option. That and turnovers.

This post was edited on 7/21/17 at 11:52 am