This game starts and ends with Graham Mertz not Bazooka Joe.
He has one great game under belt against 2-6 Illinois in his first start. ONE. He only has three wins over P5 teams that finished with a winning record. Here are those statlines.
His one win over a P5 team with a winning record last year was 8-6 Purdue. Finished 13-21 for 203 and 2 TD's. Wowee
Beat two winning P5 teams in 21'
Beat 10-4 Iowa....11-22 for 104 1 TD
Beat 8-5 Arizona State in a blah bowl game was 11-15 137 yards 1 TD 1 INT
Those are his best wins ya'll and that's about the best he can do. Are any of those teams even remotely as talented as our current Vol team? Absolutely not.
He scored 11 points against Utah with a pick.
You know who has a vastly more athletic and faster defense than Utah? Tennessee. Has Mertz even sniffed a victory against a team of our caliber before? Not even close.
I have a hard time seeing him handle our front 7. They better hope and pray they can somehow beat us just running the ball and throwing check downs and that we drop a bunch of passes again or else it will get real ugly.
Vols 42
Lizards 17
Mertz throws two picks and doesn't throw over 150 yards.