Tag: SEC West

Alabama 2018 Preview: Will the QB dance become a mess?

January 9th, 2018. Tua Tagovailoa replaces Jalen Hurts as Alabama’s quarterback mid-game after Hurts fails to show up, and wins the game for the Crimson Tide in overtime. Tuscaloosa celebrates (again). Athens mourns (again). Nick Saban breathes a sigh of relief. After all, he’d lobbied the program ever since the Tide lost to Auburn and didn’t get into the SEC Championship Game and might not have gotten into the danged play-off. Rammer Jammer was played, sung, and chanted. A lot. Someone swore that they saw Bear Bryant in heaven, crying. Roll onto August 2018 and a controversy still reigns around Tuscaloosa. Who’s going to be the starting quarterback when the team kicks off against Louisville? Will it be ‘Tua’ or will it

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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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Vanderbilt Preview 2018: Will the Commodores improve?

Derek Mason is a great speaker. He made us all want to walk through walls during his Media Days speech this year in Atlanta. He made you want to root for this Commodores team. You almost felt: “Screw this, I’m going to Nashville to see them play”. Of course, what Mason failed to discuss is the fact that since James Franklin left, Vanderbilt – under his charge – haven’t had a winning season. His record at Vanderbilt has been at best poor and worst atrocious (18-31), and his SEC record (6-26) would at least have had people talking about the end of the road. But for some reason – and this may be because people don’t think a lot of Vanderbilt football

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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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Kentucky 2018 Preview: Will the Wildcats stay middling?

Mark Stoops is under pressure, but a different kind of pressure. Kentucky Football hasn’t had a coach with a winning percentage since Blanton Collier’s seven-year period between 1954 and 1961, but Stoops has led the program to back-to-back winning seasons – the first time that has happened since Rich Brooks had four straight (2006-2009). Now, with the coaching situation in Lexington more settled than most of his competition in the conference, Stoops is expected to step up a little. During SEC Media Days questions were asked about beating Florida – a team that it hasn’t beaten in 31 years, as well as the potential of pressing on from back-to-back 7-6 years. OUTLOOK There’s a lot of love for RB Benny

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Nick Saban inks monster contract extension

The SEC West’s all about oneupmanship, and that’s why we like it. Florida is looking like a National Championsip contender for arrests, and Alabama has oneupped the rest of the SEC West with another contract extension for Nick Saban. The school announced that Saban’s extension will be through the 2025 season, and pay him a tidy $8.3m for 2018. Saban’s base salary will rise to $7.5m per season – and $400,000 a season for every season after that. Although that might seem peanuts compared to the $11.1m contract extension he signed last year, but if you take out the $4m that he was given as a signing bonus, then it’s still a slick pay rise. He said: “We are very excited about

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Watkins ‘leaves’ Florida leaves after second arrest

Finally Dan Mullen has an Advil to lesson his current headache – Justin Watkins, his four-star freshman cournerback – has said he’s going to leave the school, according to the Miami Herald. According to the Herald, he said in a tweet: “I am leaving the University of Florida to better my opportunities“. Watkins has been arrested twice in the last three months since his arrival. The first – which happened in May – was when he followed a female student to her car and kicked her car – after following her to her high school. He was arrested there for illegal trespass. And then Watkins was arrested for a quadruple felony. This included two first-degree counts of kidnap (false imprisonment), a third-degree count

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Tennessee Preview 2018: Will the Vols get off the mat?

2017 was an awful, awful year for the Tennessee Volunteers. Butch Jones was such an unpopular coach that signs saying “Fire Butch Jones” went viral. At games not involving Jones or Tennessee. When he was fired after the team lost to Kentucky, there was an audible sense of relief. You know, for two seconds until the Knoxville roadshow went on overdrive as they tried to find a successor (remember the Greg Schiano incident?) – with former Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt eventually coming through the mire to claim the top job. This year, there is every possibility that the Vols will be the basement-dwellers of their division. They aren’t a whole lot better than the terrible 4-8 team that stunk up the

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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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