We liked Tennessee by a touchdown-plus. They won by 71.

Going in, the smart read was that the betting public had Tennessee pegged too low. The market made the Volunteers a big favorite, but our number on them was bigger still — a gap of about 9.4 points between what we thought they were worth and what the line said. That gap matters: it's roughly the difference between calling a team a coin-flip-and-a-half favorite and calling them a heavy one. We thought Tennessee was the stronger side by even more than the public believed. Then they went out and won 71-0, and even that confident lean undersold what happened.

To put 9.4 points in perspective, that's a real lean, not a hair-splitting one. It's about the difference between liking a team as a solid favorite and liking them as a clear one. With that much confidence in Tennessee, you'd at least have expected Kent State to keep things somewhat respectable. Instead Kent State got run off the field — which means that even though our number came in on the wrong side of the result, the instinct that Tennessee was being underrated wasn't off base at all.

• We had Tennessee favored by 9.4 more points than the betting line did
• Tennessee blew past even our high opinion of them
• And the public's number, even though it was lower than ours, came closer to the actual rout

The fair pushback: maybe Tennessee simply had a day like this in them and our read couldn't have seen it coming. That's reasonable. We liked Tennessee by a real margin, but nobody had them winning by 71. One game is one game — a single afternoon can run hot in ways the numbers leading up to it never hint at.

A confident read is only as good as the games it's built on.

In the end, our lean nailed who the better team was but missed how lopsided it would get. That's the reminder built into every Saturday: even when you've got the right side and a strong opinion, football can still hand you a result nobody saw coming. Trust the read, respect the homework — but never forget a team can simply detonate.