{"id":230900,"date":"2025-10-17T06:32:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T06:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/230900\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T06:32:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T06:32:06","slug":"rece-davis-pete-thamel-both-side-with-alabama-over-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/230900\/","title":{"rendered":"Rece Davis, Pete Thamel both side with Alabama over Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cigar celebrations are on the line Saturday night in Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Third Saturday in October brings some of the best traditions in college football out. Alabama<\/a> plays host to Tennessee<\/a> in a game both programs are desperate to win.<\/p>\n

Just a couple of days before kickoff in Tuscaloosa, the College GameDay Podcast provided predictions. ESPN\u2019s Pete Thamel was first up, talking about Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar<\/a>. Thamel described Aguilar\u2019s play as \u201cinconsistent\u201d since the first few drives vs. Georgia<\/a>. Now, he goes up against a top secondary in Alabama.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he has not quite seen something like he\u2019s going to see on Saturday,\u201d Thamel said. \u201cSo, I am going to go with the Tuscaloosa rendition of \u2018Dixieland Delight\u2019 and I\u2019m going to take the Tide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aguilar is completing a career best 64.8% of his throws, also leading college football with 14 touchdowns. However, five interceptions are the glaring issue on the stat sheet. Four of them are in SEC play, having a pair against Georgia and Mississippi State<\/a>. You know Alabama is wanting to pull off a similar feat.<\/p>\n

Rece Davis is on the same wavelength as his podcast partner, mentioning freshman cornerback Dijon Lee<\/a>. However, there is more to the equation of picking Alabama for Davis. He likes Ty Simpson<\/a>\u2018s chances of getting big games going for a couple of receivers. If there has been a weakness for Tennessee recently, it\u2019s letting up chunk plays in the passing game when playing man coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to take Alabama too,\u201d Davis said<\/a>. \u201cI think this is going to be a wild, high scoring game. Alabama still hasn\u2019t solved all its problems in rush defense. Though they did a good job against Ahmad Hardy<\/a>, they still gave up some chunk plays against Missouri<\/a>. Alabama\u2019s pass defense has been very good\u2026 I think Alabama gets Ryan Williams<\/a> going, they get Germie Bernard<\/a> going\u2026 I\u2019m going to go with Alabama at home to win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Home teams have made a habit of holding serve in recent years. Split two each over the past four years, Tennessee is looking to break the trend. The program\u2019s last win in Tuscaloosa was in 2003 with head coach Phillip Fulmer<\/a> still in charge.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, neither one of Davis or Thamel are predicting them to get it done. Kalen DeBoer<\/a> can get a fourth straight ranked win on the resume, continuing a great run since losing the season opener.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cigar celebrations are on the line Saturday night in Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Third Saturday in October brings some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-230900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}