All-SEC team from 2016 spring games

It seems like any SEC fan offering an opinion of a player based on his strong spring performance is met with same conversational rebuttal: “Yeah, but it was just spring ball.”

While it is true that we should not overreact to the outcome of 15 practices (the last of which usually serves as an over-analyzed glorified scrimmage), we also shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the concept that a player may be improving in front of our eyes.

After all, these are young men, often teenagers, that are still very much in the developmental stage of their football lives.

So, with that in mind, we’ve decided to honor solid spring performances with a 2016 All-SEC spring game team.

This isn’t a prediction for the All-SEC team this fall, nor is it a commentary on where these players may actually rank within the confines their peers when measuring overall skill.

It’s simply a nod to those guys that deserve some recognition for a strong spring game or spring practice effort. Don’t overthink things.

Offense

• There’s a strong case to be made for several SEC quarterbacks. Luke Del Rio’s near-perfect 176 yards and two touchdowns on 10 of 11 passing was worthy of being the top dog, but Trevor Knight’s 282 yards passing and three total touchdowns as a transfer for Texas A&M got the nod here. South Carolina’s Brandon McIlwain and Georgia’s Jacob Eason are freshmen that impressed and could have very easily been picked for the All-SEC spring team. Austin Allen had a nice effort for Arkansas as well.
• Offensive line play during spring games is tough to measure. In cases that a standout performance was not apparent, we relied on spring performance awards given out by the program, which is an alternatively good measure of who had a solid spring performance. Cam Robinson didn’t play in Alabama’s spring game, and the results were so one-sided in favor of the Tide’s pass rushers in his absence that we decided to include him here.
• Georgia’s Reggie Davis had a huge G-Day, hauling in six passes for 134 yards.
• Alabama RB Bo Scarbrough was the talk of the Crimson Tide camp, but his backfield mate Damien Harris was the star of A-Day. Harris ran for 114 yards on 20 carries in a defensive-oriented spring game. An argument could be made that Scarbrough had a quieter spring game because of the defense he had to run against, and that’d be a fair one. But Harris gets the nod here.