Dawgs on Top: Week 1 SEC Rankings
Week 1 in the SEC was fun.
Georgia shut down Clemson with a defense that was absolutely frightening. Alabama rolled – and we mean ROLLED – against Miami, and LSU lost at UCLA. Everyone else? Auburn, Kentucky, South Carolina and Texas A&M all christened their series in style, while Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi State survived despite playing dreadfully, and Vanderbilt’s loss to ETSU was so bad that it had us questioning whether they should play football.
Anyway, here are our rankings for the 11 SEC teams that we’ve seen this season. Ole Miss play Louisville on Monday (and we’ll adjust them then, but here’s now!).
- Georgia (1-0): OK, we get that Alabama’s victory over Miami was really impressive. Totally understand that. But Georgia beat the No.3 team in the nation, with a gutsy, brilliant defensive performance. And although the offense was dismal (0 points), they have a whole lot of talent coming back from injury as JT Daniels’ receivers. The Dawgs will go unbeaten until the SEC Championship Game.
- Alabama (1-0): Absolutely destroyed Miami with a team that people were disconcerted by because we don’t know what to expect. OK, so Bryce Young immediately made himself a Heisman favorite with a 20/39, 344 yards, 4 TD performance. Junior WR Jameson Williams had just four receptions for 125 yards and a TD, TE Cameron Latu had 2 TDs as the Tide put up 345 yards though the air, and used 10 receivers in that process. Dear Lord.
- Ole Miss (1-0): 9pt favorite Ole Mis hammered the line in the first half of the game (26-0 at half-time), and then coasted away with 43-24 victory. Matt Corral’s 22/32, 381 TD, 1 TD performance may not wake up the Heisman voters (because he didn’t throw 500 TDs), but the rush game that produced 4 TDs will be very pleasing to Lane Kiffin. This is the most dangerous team in the SEC West to Alabama.
- Kentucky (1-0): Yes, it was Louisiana Monroe, but listen to us: UK has one of the best offensive lines in the country, featuring two first round draft picks. Now they have a play-action with a cannon of an arm in Will Levis (Note to self: The reason why he sucked at Penn State was more because of his offensive line), they are really, really dangerous.
- Auburn (1-0): It wasn’t so much the fact that the Tigers thrashed Akron that surprised us. Akron was there for it. But it was the fact that Bo Nix went 20-22 with 275 yards and 3 TD, and Tank Bigsby is still as good as advertised. Their next big game is in Happy Valley against Penn State. That’s going to be a good litmus test of a team who will almost certainly be ranked by then.
- Florida (1-0): With the receiving talent pretty much gone, the Gators are going to have to lean a lot of Malik Davis. Davis had 97 yards and TD. The question still remains at quarterback, because Emory Jones was mediocre (119 yards, 1 TD, 2 picks), while dual-threat QB Anthony Richardson threw for 40 yards….but ran for 160 (and a TD). Still, we remain worried.
- Texas A&M (1-0): Texas A&M wasn’t wonderful in their opener. Haynes King’s 3 INTs left a lot to be desired, but the running game put up over 300 yards, leading me to believe that the Aggies will be fine when all’s said and done. The defense is also terrific, led by Leon O’Neal, who had 2 INTs to his name.
- South Carolina (1-0): Zeb Norland threw for 4 TDs in his first game as a QB for the Gamecocks. ZaQuandre Wright filled Kevin Harris’ shoes, rushing for 128 yards and a TD, while leading the ‘Cocks in receiving yards too. And they pitched a shut-out too, winning 46-0. Beamer ‘Ball, baby!
- Missouri (1-0): The win against Central Michigan featured a lot of dreadful. Sure, the Tigers came out 34-24 winners, but the secondary was passed all over. Tyler Badie’s 203 yard, 1 TD performance was excellent, but here’s to hoping that Mizzou’s unglittering performance will improved on. A nasty date with Kentucky awaits on Saturday.
- Tennessee (1-0): Joe Milton is a bad quarterback. Everybody seems to know it except Josh Heupel. His 11/23, 140 Yard, 1 TD performance against a bad, bad Bowling Green team who were 30-point underdogs reflects the fact that there’s a hell of a lot to do, and we can expect Hendon Hooker to be the starting quarterback by the 6th game of the season, if not before. Oh, Tennessee won by the way, 38-6.
- Arkansas (1-0): I had argued with someone over Twitter who was less crap – Arkansas or Rice. I remember that i’d actually seen a bit of this game, and Arkansas were indeed crap against a Rice team that were nearly 20 point underdogs (the good news for Vegas is that the Razorbacks won 38-19). But for a long stretch of the game, Arkansas was trailing and looking really, really bad. Eventually, the class took over, and they scored 21 straight, but this was a trashy performance.
- Mississippi State (1-0): Mississippi State survived Louisiana Tech with a pitiful performance. Yes, they scored right at the end. Louisiana Tech lost this more than Mississippi State won it. If things don’t improve, the Mike Leach experiment will be short-lived in Starkville.
- LSU (0-1): Look, we know LSU lost to a good UCLA team. The Bruins had some electricity in Zach Charbonnet, but for us, it was the same old errors. The defense couldn’t consistently tackle. The secondary – meant to be featuring two early round picks – were torn apart by an average quarterback, and the offensive line ensured that Max Johnson was running for his life. Made us seriously wonder whether 5-7 would keep Ed Orgeron in a job.
- Vanderbilt (0-1): Vanderbilt was run out the yard by ETSU, a FCS team that discared its football team then put Humpty Dumpty back together again. My big question: Are there 5 teams worse in the Power-5 than Vanderbilt? We can think of three: Kansas, Arizona and Nebraska. But maybe they’d do well in the Pac-12.