Which SEC coach is on the hottest seat?

Right, it’s our annual hot seat conversation, in which we rank which SEC coach is on the hot seat at the start of the year. Ed Orgeron (LSU): ‘Coach O’ is beloved by his players, but his 15-6 record in Baton Rouge isn’t great, the Tigers have finished 2nd and then 3rd in the conference. If LSU fails to beat Alabama again (they haven’t beaten the Tide since 2011) there’s another major loss like they did to Troy, and seriously underperform with the talent that they have, then the tongues will be wagging. Having said that, if the Tigers fail to beat Miami on Monday night, then the knives could start getting pulled. Barry Odom (Missouri): Missouri’s defense was so awful

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Will Alabama kick off the season with a win? SEC Predictions for Week 1

It’s the fun bit of our job when we get to predict the Week 1 games of the college football season for SEC teams. We think we know everything after Week 1, only to see that our ‘knowledge’ is blown away by Thanksgiving that we feel miserable and inclined to douse ourselves in whiskey while we wait around for bowl season. Anyway, here are your predictions for Week 1 of the SEC season. As usual, we’re going in the order of games we’re interested in. Sorry Texas A&M vs Northwestern State, you’re not very high. The first five games on this list are being played on neutral fields. Which means that if you’re a season ticket holder of a SEC

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Georgia Preview 2018: Expect SEC East dominance

The Georgia Bulldogs will absolutely dominate the SEC East. We know this because the SEC East is a mixture of bad teams (Vanderbilt, Tennessee), teams with new coaches (Florida, Tennessee), teams that have an offense that is still trying to find itself (South Carolina), and a high-scoring team that plays no ‘D’ (Missouri). Georgia’s offense has found itself, is a good team, has the same coach, and plays ‘D’. The only problem for Georgia is how its SEC West schedule measures up – the Dawgs will definitely be playing Auburn (home) and LSU (road), and possibly Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. Anyway, here’s your 2018 preview…. OFFENSE Let’s be quite brazen about this: No running back unit is going to

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Ole Miss Preview 2018: It should be entertaining

Ole Miss was one of the most entertaining teams of 2017. You can’t argue with that. If it wasn’t arguing its case about bribing different players to come play in Oxford, then it was the head coach getting ousted for making calls to escorts in Tampa and not using a burner to do it. And then came the actual college football season, where they dropped about 32 points on teams using a high-octane offense and gave up about 35 using a defense with more holes than the Titanic. It was pretty awesome. In the off-season of 2018, it’s been a bit of a step-up because there hasn’t be a dead hooker found in a school locker, although QB Shea Patterson managed to

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Arkansas Preview 2018: Can Chad Morris resurrect the Hogs?

So much for the #winning. Bret Bielema is now out after never finishing higher than 3rd in the SEC West, and finishing 7th in three out of seven years in his reign. Oh, and he went 11-29, which probably didn’t help him. Anyway, Chad Morris has been ‘prized’ away from SMU, and he’s an exciting prospect for an offensethat depended on a heavy line but really went nowhere (94th in the country) and a defense that went nowhere too (102nd last year). So what do we think will happen in 2018? OFFENSE Giant QB Cole Kelley (he’s 6-7) is loved by just about everybody, and we really like him, too. He threw for 1,038 yards and 8 TDs, and if

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Florida 2018 Preview: Can Dan Mullen improve Florida?

Trainwreck doesn’t cover just bad Florida’s 2017 season was. There was a bit of a smile when they beat Tennessee on a Hail Mary in one of the plays of the season, but that was it, save for Jim McElwain’s nudist battle with a shark. Dan Mullen arrived to the pomp and circumstance (and some new Jordans), but he’s had to deal with non-stop disciplinary crap – something that must be weighing on Gator Nation. You know, that and the rise and rise of one of their most hated enemies. OFFENSE Every time we think about UF’s offense, we get squeamish. The Gators were 110th in total offense, good enough for the second-worst in the SEC behind Tennessee (the third-worst

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Auburn 2018 Preview: Can War Eagle fly to the promised land?

Georgia and Alabama both had something in common when they played the National Championship Game last season: They were both comprehensively beaten by Auburn. There is an argument that the Tigers could have won the SEC Championship Game if running back star Kerryon Johnson – who had ripped the Dawgs apart in the win at Jordan-Hare – hadn’t been hurt. With the team obviously deflated, the season finale bowl loss to UCF wasn’t pleasant for Gus Malzahn, either. Anyway, it’s 2018 now, and Johnson gone, but QB Jarrett Stidham is staying. As seeems usual on the plains, it should be an interesting season… OFFENSE As mentioned ad infinitum, Stidham got engaged this summer and took part in a camp or two.

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Mississippi State 2018 Preview: New coach, new offense?

If you’re a fan of offense, then Mississippi State got one of the hires of the season when they brought in Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead to replace Dan Mullen as its new head coach. When he was in Happy Valley, he made Saquon Barkley a top-five NFL draft pick, Trace McSorley one of the best quarterbacks in college football, and a juggernaut, lightning-quick offense that jumped from 42nd to 19th from 2016 to 2017, and ranked 12th against conference in touchdowns. Moorhead immediately comes across as a pretty affable guy – something that we’ll find interesting how this translates to the cowbells and stress that comes with a SEC job. It might not be his first job (before he got

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Florida incoming freshman player arrested (again)

Florida incoming freshman cornerback – and four-star recruit Justin Watkins has been arrested for the second time in three months. He has been suspended indefinitely by coach Dan Mullen. Watkins’ first arrest was trespassing on another high school’s grounds that he didn’t attend (which isn’t a big one), but a quadruple felony. This included two first-degree counts of kidnap (false imprisonment), a third-degree count of domestic battery by strangulation, according to records. The freshman was offered by Alabama, LSU, Florida State, Clemson and Texas before deciding to go to Gainseville. Looks as though he’s going somewhere else after this short stint.  

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LSU Preview: Can Ed Orgeron save his job?

Thanks to the firing of 50% of the SEC coaches, Ed Orgeron is on the hottest seat in the SEC. In fact, after a season when LSU was awful offensively, failed to beat Alabama, didn’t even figure in the SEC West AND was upset by Troy to boot, it’s a small miracle that he stayed in Baton Rouge for the 2018 season. Yes, the 9-4 record may have stood out with a 6-2 record in the SEC, but if you look deeply into the season, the Tigers were more unimpressive than impressive all season long – particularly on points-scoring side of the ball. Despite all of this, LSU had seven picks in the 2018 NFL Draft (yes, even Danny Etling was

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