Tennessee vs. Kentucky prediction: What the analytics say

Expert prediction for Tennessee vs. Kentucky by an analytical football model that simulates games and picks winners.

Tennessee vs. Kentucky prediction 2025 | Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

SEC rivals renew their acquaintance this weekend as No. 17 Tennessee hits the road a second-straight week in a battle against Kentucky in college football’s Week 9 action.

Tennessee dipped in the national rankings after dropping to 2-2 in SEC competition with losses against Georgia and now Alabama, and is looking to get back on track for the second half of the regular season in a fierce battle for playoff consideration.

Kentucky... isn’t. It beat Toledo and Eastern Michigan this year, and that’s it.

UK fell to 0-4 in SEC play and went over 20 points in just one of those games, ranking 104th in scoring and 105th nationally in total offensive output in 2025.

Looking ahead to this week’s matchup, let’s check out the latest college football predictions from the Football Power Index computer prediction model.

The model simulates every NCAA college football game 20,000 times and uses key analytics from both teams and picks winners based on a projected scoring margin per game.

Tennessee vs. Kentucky prediction

As expected, the model is siding strongly with the Volunteers over the Wildcats by one of the larger margins among the Top 25 games this weekend.

Tennessee is a massive favorite in the matchup, coming out ahead in 75 percent of the computer’s simulations of the game.

That leaves Kentucky as the presumptive winner in the remaining 25 percent of sims.

In total, the Vols come out on top in 15,000 of the simulations of the game, while the Wildcats edged out UT in the other 5,000 predictions.

How does that translate into an expected margin of victory in the game?

Despite the wide margin between these two teams on paper when it comes to the outright projections, the Vols’ closer games of late played into the model, which makes predictions based on margins, resulting in a potentially-closer game.

Tennessee is projected to be 7.2 points better than Kentucky on the same field in both teams’ current composition, according to the model’s latest forecast.

Tennessee vs. Kentucky future projections

Those two losses dropped the Vols in the latest SEC power projections, placing sixth in the conference in the computer’s latest 136-team college football rankings.

Tennessee now makes the College Football Playoff in just 18.6 percent of the model’s future predictions of how the conference race plays out in the weeks to come.

The model forecasts the Volunteers will win 8.6 games this season.

Kentucky is bringing up the rear in the SEC, projected to win 4.4 games with a meager 13 percent chance to become bowl eligible.

College Football Power Index

Football Power Index (FPI) college football rankings and computer prediction model are a measure of team strength that predicts a team’s future performance. 

Rankings and scores predictions are based on 20,000 simulations of a team’s season and games, using a combination of key analytics, including scores to date, quality of opponents, team talent, recruiting, and a team’s schedule.

Teams are ranked not in order of talent like in other rankings, but by a projected point margin per game against an average team on a neutral field.

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How good is the prediction model?

How accurate was the College Football Power Index computer prediction model last Saturday?

Projecting the games a week ago, the Power Index models correctly predicted 71.4 percent of all games and hit exactly 50 percent against the spread.

Predicting a total of 799 college football games a year ago, the Power Index computers were correct for 70.964 percent of their final picks, ranking eighth nationally out of 55 other football models.

Over the last decade, the Football Power Index has proven correct on 75 percent of FBS college football game predictions, including in 73 percent of matchups when it favored a team with at least 70 percent likelihood to win.