Explosive plays are the reason most of us watch football.

There’s nothing more exciting than holding your breath as your favorite quarterback lets one fly 50 yards down the field, or when the conference’s most exciting running back slips through a seam and has nothing but daylight in front of him.

So this season, we’re going to be tracking explosive plays for each team … how well they’re able to produce them, and how well they are able to defend them.

For the purposes of this story, SDS defines an explosive play as a run of at least 20 yards or a pass of at least 30 yards.

EXPLOSIVE PLAY MARGIN

This is the ultimate measure of how well a team is performing in the explosive plays department. It is simply a tally of explosive plays created measured out against the amount of explosive plays allowed. If your team has made more explosive plays than they’ve given up, there’s a good chance they are doing something right.

Mississippi State padded its lead in margin with a +2 against in its 51-50 shootout win against Arkansas last week. The Bulldogs have been the leader in this category for much of the season.

MSU’s opponent this week, rival Ole Miss, was right behind them in 2nd but fell to 4th after a -2 effort in its 38-17 win over LSU.

Incredibly, Missouri was 5th in this department entering last week, but the Tigers dropped all the way to 9th after posting a -3 against Tennessee, which takes its spot at 5th.

We now have just two teams in the negatives, and that’s South Carolina (-8) and Vanderbilt (-11). The Commodores took over the spot at the bottom of the rankings from the Gamecocks after a -4 outing against Texas A&M, which consequently pulled itself out of the negatives.

TEAM EXPLOSIVE PLAY MARGIN EXPLOSIVE PLAYS EXPLOSIVE PLAYS ALLOWED
1. Mississippi State +17 37 20
2. LSU +14 39 25
3. Alabama +12 29 17
4. Ole Miss +11 41 30
5. Tennessee +10 37 27
T6. Auburn +9 31 22
T6. Georgia +9 32 23
8. Florida +8 27 19
9. Missouri +7 21 14
10. Arkansas +5 39 34
11. Kentucky +4 36 32
12. Texas A&M +2 33 31
13. South Carolina -8 27 35
14. Vanderbilt -11 17 28

EXPLOSIVE PLAYS: OFFENSE

This will be the area in which we break down how the explosive plays are happening for each team.

The Rebels are still the most explosive team in the SEC with 41 total on the season. Ole Miss’ 24 passes of 30-plus yards is tied with none other than Mississippi State for the most in the conference. Those two teams will meet in the Egg Bowl on Saturday in Starkville.

Speaking of the Bulldogs, they had four explosive passes in its win over Arkansas, playing to their strengths like many SEC teams this week. Tennessee had four of its own against Missouri, all on the ground. Texas A&M had four explosive plays against Vanderbilt, all through the air. Finally, Georgia had four explosive plays against Georgia Southern, all on the ground.

However, Kentucky took the cake with that trend. The Wildcats had a whopping seven explosive plays against Charlotte, and all of those came in the running game as they rushed for 415 yards, the 4th-highest total in school history.

TEAM EXPLOSIVE PLAYS RUSHES FOR 20+ PASSES FOR 30+
1. Ole Miss 41 17 24
T2. Arkansas 39 18 21
T2. LSU 39 26 13
T4. Mississippi State 37 13 24
T4. Tennessee 37 23 14
6. Kentucky 36 23 13
7. Texas A&M 33 16 17
8. Georgia 32 24 8
9. Auburn 31 17 14
10. Alabama 29 18 11
T11. Florida 27 9 18
T11. South Carolina 27 12 15
13. Missouri 21 13 8
14. Vanderbilt 17 11 6

EXPLOSIVE PLAYS: DEFENSE

Much like the offensive rankings above, we’ve taken similar effort to break down exactly how the SEC defenses are allowing explosive plays.

As it has for much of the season, Missouri is still the conference leader in preventing explosive plays. That comes despite the fact that Mizzou allowed four last week against Tennessee, almost half as many as it had allowed the rest of the season previously (10). The Vols actually managed four runs of 20-plus yards against the Tigers’ stingy front, which was one more than they had surrendered all season before that.

Florida and Texas A&M were the only teams not to allow an explosive play in their respective games. As a result, the Gators (19) moved up into 3rd behind Alabama and Missouri for the 3rd-best in the league.

This week’s game between Arkansas and Missouri should be an interesting one as the Razorbacks are tied with LSU for the 2nd-most explosive plays in the SEC while a Mizzou defense that’s showing more holes in this area recently still ranks 1st.

South Carolina still ranks dead last in allowing these big plays, and its 27 rushes of 20-plus yards are the most given up by any Power 5 school.

TEAM EXPLOSIVE PLAYS RUSHES FOR 20+ PASSES FOR 30+
1. Missouri 14 7 7
2. Alabama 17 5 12
3. Florida 19 10 9
4. Mississippi State 20 11 9
5. Auburn 22 14 8
6. Georgia 23 14 9
7. LSU 25 10 15
8. Tennessee 27 13 14
9. Vanderbilt 28 16 12
10. Ole Miss 30 13 17
11. Texas A&M 31 21 10
T12. Kentucky 32 18 14
T12. Arkansas 32 12 22
14. South Carolina 35 27 8