Opponent Preview: We Hope Tennessee State Has A Good Time

The day has arrived. It’s time for us to start previewing the Georgia Bulldogs’ 2026 opponents, starting with the Tennessee State Tigers.

We make it a policy here at Dawg Sports not to lie to our readers, and we’re not going to start now. So here goes: the Tigers aren’t an exceptional football team. I do not expect the Bulldogs to find themselves in a close football game when they visit Sanford Stadium next month. But that won’t stop us from bringing you an inordinate amount of information about them. Let’s dive in.

2025 Review: It’s Gotta Get Better, Right?

Tennessee State’s first season under head coach Reggie Barlow was a rough one. Barlow arrived from the DC Defenders of the UFL to replace Eddie George, who left for Bowling Green after leading the Tigers to a share of the OVC-Big South title in 2024.

The transition wasn’t particularly smooth, with dozens of players leaving the program through the transfer portal before Barlow’s staff could even hold spring practice. The result on the field was a 2-10 record, including an 0-8 mark in OVC-Big South play. The Tigers opened the year with a win over North Carolina A&T in the John Merritt Classic, but that turned out to be the season’s high point. They were blown out by top ranked North Dakota State, dropped a tight one to Alabama A&M, and lost lopsided games to Tennessee Tech and Eastern Illinois down the stretch. With the previous three year starting quarterback gone to graduation, the offense had to be rebuilt almost entirely through the portal, and it showed in the win column. By year’s end, quarterback Rodney Tisdale Jr. had emerged as the primary option under center, giving the staff at least one building block heading into year two. Hooray progress!

Offense: Maybe Better, Definitely Different

The biggest change on offense is at the top, where Barlow brought in Matt Leone as offensive coordinator to replace Shannon Harris and install a new system this offseason. That shift alone reshapes how the Tigers will attack defenses in 2026. At quarterback, the spring competition was expected to come down to Tisdale and Florida State transfer Brock Glenn, but an injury to Glenn during spring camp opened the door for Tisdale to take firm hold of the starting job. The staff also added depth at the position by bringing in South Florida transfer Marcelis Tate as another arm in the room.

Up front, Tennessee State restocked the offensive line with additions like Conner Speller from Erskine College and Lookman Balogun, a Southern Utah and Iowa Central transfer, both expected to compete for guard spots. At tight end, Francisco Pratts III joined a group that Leone’s new scheme may make more use of, a departure from how the position was deployed under the previous staff. Overall, the offensive identity is still being defined, but continuity at quarterback paired with a fresh coordinator gives the Tigers a chance to be more stable than the patchwork unit that struggled in 2025.

Defense: Continuity, For A Change.

Unlike the offense, the defensive staff returns largely intact, with Gregg Williams back for his second season as coordinator. That continuity should help after a first year in which the group had to be pieced together on short notice following the coaching change and mass roster turnover. Williams brings decades of coaching experience at the NFL and college level, and having a full offseason to install his scheme and evaluate personnel is a meaningful upgrade over the compressed timeline the staff faced a year ago.

The 2026 signing class leaned more toward offensive and depth pieces, so the defensive roster is expected to rely heavily on players who were already on campus in 2025 growing into bigger roles, along with a handful of transfer additions still being folded into the two deep. The unit gave up a lot of points last season, including in blowout losses to North Dakota State and Tennessee Tech, so tightening things up against the run and creating more turnovers will be a central focus this fall. That being said, Georgia is still going to have a pretty decided advantage when looking across the line of scrimmage.

Special Teams

Special teams was not a major storyline in Tennessee State’s offseason moves, with most of the attention going to the quarterback competition and offensive line overhaul. In the words of the great Charlie Munger, “I have nothing more to add.”

The Bottom Line

Tennessee State was just picked to finish last in the conference by league media, and that wasn’t an accident. This remains a team clawing its way back up toward respectability after requiring a total program rebuild. Sadly that kind of thing is happening a lot in college football’s lower echelons,.

I don’t expect the Tigers to be particularly competitive in Athens. The combination of a Georgia team returning a lot of key components and a TSU squad that would be outmanned at best could get ugly. Score prediction: Georgia 56, Tennessee State 7.