The SEC West is a beautiful disaster.
A victim of the contrivances that are preseason polls, the SEC West is nothing like people thought it would be when the season started five weeks ago. The division has been stretched, squeezed, and turned inside out. As college football reaches its midway point, it’s worth gauging who’s for real and who’s faking it in the SEC West.
…
CONTENDER
ALABAMA
The loss to Ole Miss was a loss to a good team, but it came with a fluky component: the Tide turned the ball over five times. That’s half of Alabama’s entire giveaway output all season. That simply won’t happen again. That game also featured the Cooper Bateman experiment, which will certainly be a one-off thing in 2015 as long as Jacob Coker stays healthy.
The deconstructions of both Wisconsin, and especially this weekend of Georgia, show that Alabama is still just as formidable as in years past. Derrick Henry isn’t the best tailback in the division, but he doesn’t have to be. The defense isn’t populated by handfuls of surefire first-round picks, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s no receiver as talented in the vertical passing game as Amari Cooper, but there doesn’t need to be. This Alabama team is a sum of its parts, and the parts are already talented to begin with. A Nick Saban Alabama team comes with expectations, and this team will meet them. It will be in the conversation in December and will have just as good a chance as any team to be playing in Glendale.
OLE MISS
I am most certainly putting Ole Miss in this spot despite getting shellacked by Florida this weekend. That’s more of a statement about the revival in Florida than about Ole Miss being a flash in the pan.
The Ole Miss defense is too good to consistently get lit up as it was against Florida. It might be a blessing in disguise — it’ll knock them down a peg or two. The Rebels played lackadaisically against Vanderbilt, an obvious hangover after the Alabama win. Chad Kelly, Laquon Treadwell, and others are too talented on offense to not score consistently. The SEC won’t get two teams into the playoff, but the Rebels will certainly be one of the last at the table making their case on the field.
…
MAYBE, I DON’T KNOW, I’M NOT SURE
LSU
This LSU team is a nightmare to gauge. The Tigers have the best player in the country so far this season in Leonard Fournette, but they have done very little on offense when he doesn’t touch the ball. Fournette has 894 of LSU’s 1,726 offensive yards this year. That’s 51.8 percent of the offense. Those are Heisman numbers, but they’re also dangerous numbers. What happens when he gets shut down in a game, which absolutely will happen at some point?
The Tiger defense has quietly been one of the most consistent units in the country. In every game, coordinator Kevin Steele’s group has given up no more than 19-24 points, and the Tigers have surrendered more than 300 yards only once this season. Consistency is essential in the SEC, and the Tigers will need it once they step up and start playing the cream of the league. The first test comes in two weeks when the Florida Gators visit Baton Rouge.
TEXAS A&M
Texas A&M is a microcosm of the national college football landscape as a whole. The Aggies are good, but how good? None of their wins hold much water so far. The Arizona State win is an anomaly because no one really knows what type of team the Sun Devils are. The wins over Mississippi State and Arkansas aren’t that good either.
The huge plus for the Aggies is the comical amount of athletic talent on the field. Myles Garrett, Ricky Seals-Jones, Tra Carson, Armani Watts… these are all amazing athletes with versatile skill sets. That makes A&M a dangerous team. Just how dangerous remains to be seen. The Aggies get a bye next week but then get Alabama in College Station before traveling to Ole Miss the week after that. There’ll be nowhere to hide then.
…
PRETENDER
MISSISSIPPI STATE
All the talent lost to graduation and the NFL was shown to the nation this weekend in College Station. This team was beaten and exposed by Texas A&M all over the field. Even the star in Starkville, Dak Prescott, had a mediocre game. The Bulldogs aren’t in the elite class of the SEC, let alone the country. Both games against higher-class competition, A&M and LSU, resulted in losses. Even Auburn took the Bulldogs to the limit. This team is reminiscent of the 2012 Mississippi State team that was a bloated 7-0 before being brought down to earth when it played the teeth of the division. Dan Mullen has done a remarkable job in turning State from perennial doormat to a legitimate threat to win most games, but 7-9 wins a year is where his teams will usually be. This year will be no different.
…
PACK IT IN
ARKANSAS
Remember when Arkansas was the trendy preseason pick to make noise this year? How long ago that seems. The Hogs sit at 2-3 on the year and will lose next weekend in Tuscaloosa. Bret Bielema wasn’t brought into Fayetteville to miss out on bowl games, but his current 3-15 record in SEC play does him no favors. The Razorbacks will be favored in only two more games this season, against UT-Martin and Auburn, and Bielema will need to find a way to turn the wick up in the locker room, because his seat gets hotter by the day.
AUBURN
Aside from the “homecoming special” against Idaho, will Auburn be favored in any other game the rest of the season?
…
College football is a mess. The SEC West is a mess. It’ll all sort itself out the week after Thanksgiving.
