Tennessee's ratings edge trumps Auburn's matching 3-1 record

Both teams arrive at 3-1, and on paper that reads as an even Southeastern Conference game. The ratings say otherwise. Auburn sits 19th in FBS overall, 11 spots ahead of Tennessee at 30th, but that gap owes plenty to a 10th-ranked strength of schedule that has padded the résumé more than the performance. Look at power, offense and defense instead, and Tennessee is graded A across all three with ranks of 12th, 11th and 12th, while Auburn checks in with an A- across the board but sits 21st, 28th and 22nd in those same categories.

Tennessee has backed that up on the field, winning three of its four games this season by 21 points or more. Auburn's own surge has been real too, a 28 spot climb in the Versus FBS rankings this season, but it has come against the tougher slate, not necessarily the better performance.

This is a conference game for both programs, and Versus projects Tennessee to win at home 32 to 22, giving the Volunteers a 71 percent chance against Auburn's 29. The model reads this as a case where the win-loss column and the underlying ratings are telling two different stories, and it is siding with the ratings.