The SEC East has been the undercard pretty much ever since Urban Meyer split from Florida. This season looks like that might begin to reverse course with Tennessee and Florida seemingly on the rise.

There still are as many unknowns as proclamations. So which parts of these preconceived notions are overrated and which are underrated?

Overrated

  • Jim McElwain’s influence: Florida climbed its way to an unexpected SEC East title in 2015, which had the Gators clamoring that all of their problems were fixed by canning Will Muschamp and hiring Jim McElwain. This isn’t a knock on McElwain, one of the finest coaches in the Nick Saban coaching tree. Despite the division crown, Florida looked awfully rocky at times throughout McElwain’s first season. The Gators ended the season about as embarrassingly as possible with a blowout loss to Michigan. Florida will be in contention, no doubt, in the up-for-grabs East, but McElwain hasn’t solved all of Florida’s problems.
  • Georgia quarterback Jacob Eason: Everbody thinks Jacob Eason is good. It’s easy enough to watch his game tape, albeit high school film, and tell that the decision-making and arm talent is obvious. But he has never played a down of SEC football and is being touted as the savior of the Georgia program. In due time, he’ll be a beast, and if he wins the starting job, Eason will likely show flashes in 2016. But his Heisman-level hype is a tad off base for a guy who might sit behind Greyson Lambert, who looked like he couldn’t orchestrate touchdowns at times in 2015.
  • SEC East’s inferiority: Nobody will dispute that Alabama is the King of the SEC. And, if you look back at the recent SEC title success, Alabama, Auburn and LSU have boasted the best teams. With the Mississippi schools rising, and Florida and Tennessee in down years, the SEC West has become the bullying big brother over the East. The West has won seven consecutive SEC titles. That stigma probably carries into 2016, but it shouldn’t. Tennessee might be the odds-on favorite, even over Alabama, by opening kickoff. Florida is the defending East champ and likely will only get better as the familiarity with McElwain grows. And Georgia seems to have as much program energy as any school in the conference. The SEC East is the little brother no more.
  • Tennessee as “Wide Receiver U”: This has become the new thing to do among college football programs. Schools think they have the best position group in America, and they deem themselves “Blank U.” Just scan the comments of these articles, and you’ll find fans from every SEC school knocking the nicknames of all the other ones. Tennessee is the most recent school to do it, staking its claim as WRU because of its strong receiving corps and several recent receiver pickups in recruiting. It’s true, the Volunteers might have the best top-to-bottom group in the conference, in the East at a minimum. But the whole “Blank U” concept is a baloney. Besides, if there’s a WRU in the SEC this year, it’s coming from Texas A&M in the West.
  • Importance of Georgia-Florida game: This annual matchup in Jacksonville often plays a key role in the final SEC East standings. But this season, with Tennessee back in the proverbial driver’s seat, this game doesn’t have look of a make-or-break contest. Before the game on Oct. 29, Florida plays Tennessee and LSU, as well as upset-minded Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Georgia gets North Carolina (no SEC implications, of course), Ole Miss and Tennessee to go with tough road games at Missouri and at South Carolina. The winner in Jacksonville won’t be a shoo-in to win the East this season.

Underrated

  • Georgia’s offense: The Bulldogs finished 85th in scoring offense last season, nearly a 20-point drop from the 45 points per game style they had during the end of Aaron Murray’s career. It had Georgia fans howling that Greyson Lambert needed to go, and ultimately, it probably was the last straw for the Mark Richt tenure. But Georgia returns pretty much everyone aside from Malcolm Mitchell and John Theus. The Bulldogs have an absolutely stacked running back group, headlined by Nick Chubb and Sony Michel. It’s a patchwork group of receivers, but there’s some firepower there from the younger batch. Who knows whether Lambert or Eason or maybe even Brice Ramsey will start at quarterback. But no matter what, the offense will be better than it was in 2015, and that could make all the difference between making the SEC title game and not.
  • Missouri coach Barry Odom: Of the three SEC head coaching newcomers, fans know the least about Odom. Muschamp has head coaching experience. Kirby Smart has a championship pedigree. And then there’s Odom, who has been with Missouri for so long that no one in the SEC knows what to think about Gary Pinkel’s chosen one. Odom worked his way up from Missouri grad assistant to director of recruiting to director of football operations to safeties coach to defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. While the Tigers captured back-to-back East titles, Odom actually left to go to Memphis for two years, but his ability to recruit helped give Pinkel and Co. the talent it needed to win. Missouri often gets scoffed at as legitimate contenders, and it might be warranted this time around, but Odom presents a worthy challenge for the rest of the division.
  • Vanderbilt running back Ralph Webb: Derrick Henry, Leonard Fournette, Alex Collins, Jalen Hurd, Tra Carson and Sony Michel. Those are the only six guys in the conference last season who ran for more yards than Webb. Henry, Collins and Carson are now on NFL rosters. Fournette and Hurd are Heisman contenders, and Michel might be too if he didn’t have Nick Chubb alongside him to steal a bulk of the carries. Webb rushed for 1,152 yards as a sophomore, which was only a slight increase from his freshman season. Vanderbilt gets lost in the SEC conversation, but Webb shouldn’t. He’s a bona fide SEC starting running back, and he’ll have to carry a majority of the workload for the Commodores.
  • Tennessee’s pre-bye week strength of schedule: For all the College Football Playoff talk, it sure won’t be easy for the Volunteers. Before Tennessee’s Oct. 22 bye week, the Volunteers have to go to Athens and College Station back-to-back weeks. They’ll get home games against Florida and Alabama, but it’s Florida and Alabama, which have been Tennessee’s Achilles’ heel for the past decade. And then there’s the matchup at the NASCAR “stadium” in Bristol against Virginia Tech. The Hokies will have energy under a new head coach, and it will be an unusual neutral site situation in an unusual stadium. The front end of Tennessee’s schedule is as difficult as anybody’s in the country.
  • Will Muschamp 2.0: How many people have already written off Muschamp as an inept head coach? Florida feels vindicated with its decision to part ways with the fiery defensive mind, and it worked out for the Gators last year. Auburn even has some happy followers that its defense will have a new leader. But Muschamp seems like a man on a mission to prove that he learned from his four-year stint in Gainesville. He didn’t recruit well in the back half of his tenure, and it caught up to him as Florida missed bowl season and had offensive linemen blocking each other. While it might take some time to get it right in South Carolina, the Gamecocks will be a threat to upset at least one of the SEC East favorites.