After three weeks of play, we are starting to see through some of the preseason hype, wonder where players came from or just hope it is like this for the rest of the season.

Here is what we learned this week from the SEC West teams:

ALABAMA: We learned the Crimson Tide has got to learn to take care of the football. In the loss to Ole Miss, Alabama turned the ball over five times and did not collect a turnover in return. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing the Mississippi Rebels or Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, five turnovers are hard to overcome.

Two of the turnovers against the Rebs came on kickoff returns. What is it with Bama and kickoff returns against Ole Miss? In last year’s game in Oxford, the Rebels kicked off after tying the game midway through the fourth quarter. The Tide fumbled, Ole Miss recovered and scored the winning touchdown soon after.

Take care of the football, Bama.

ARKANSAS: The Razorbacks are playing to the level of their competition. They did it against Toledo and it came back and bit them in the pork shank. Saturday they did it against Texas Tech and its high-flying offense.

Arkansas hung with Tech heading into the halftime locker room tied and kept it close in the second half, eventually falling 35-24.

Playing to the level of your competition can be a good thing. If you are playing a top-five team, it is a great thing. But when you play down to your competition, it is bad.

Arkansas does this. It needs to stop.

AUBURN: Well, we learned what many suspected this season. The Tigers were never that good. They survived Louisville with a fumble return for a touchdown, pulled out a possible Gus Malzahn meltdown scenario with a win over FCS Jacksonville State (remember when Jack Crowe was at Arkansas and lost to the Citadel? He was fired the next Monday. Ironically, he ended up at, wait for it, Jacksonville State).

Saturday, Auburn finally got to go up against an SEC West team and came into Baton Rouge with a swagger. After one play, that swagger had taken a big hit with Leonard Fournette, a player Auburn’s Rudy Ford said, “shouldn’t be that tough to stop,” ran 71 yards. He ended up torching the Auburn defense for 12 yards a carry. He totalled 228 yards with three touchdowns. He topped the 200-yard mark on a 29-yard touchdown run that was only 29 yards because that is as far as he needed to go. It could have been a mile touchdown run.

As bad as the defense is, the Jeremy Johnson experiment has got to end. Sean White, a redshirt freshman, is waiting in the wings. He has no experience, but was ESPN’s No. 2 QB prospect and was the MVP of the Under Armour All-American Game. At this point this might be the time to get him the experience.

LSU: We learned that when the Bayou Bengals pin their ears back, it can get ugly for the other team. LSU had its first game washed away by rain and then went to Starkville and handled Mississippi State, although it did not dominate the Bulldogs.

Saturday, LSU taught us it can dominate.

I am not sure of too many teams around the country who would want to play this bunch now. They are good and they know it.

MISSISSIPPI STATE: We re-learned about State this week. We already knew, but again it was on display, Dak Prescott is the best quarterback in the conference.

All he needed was a little help and Saturday in a win against Northwestern (La.) State, we got glimmers of the rescue team. Mississippi State paraded in multiple players at multiple positions and we learned there is depth in Starkville we did not realize existed.

Once the Bulldogs hit their stride, we might be looking at a giant killer.

OLE MISS: We learned the Rebels have a little backbone to them. And they have confidence in one another.

After taking a nice lead over Alabama, the Tide mounted a comeback and just needed the ball to move in for the comeback win. Ole Miss teams of the past would have either turned the ball over or run it three times and punted. But this bunch had some backbone to it. The Rebels did not quit down the stretch and were rewarded with a win.

The confidence factor is intriguing. It is almost as if the offense knows the defense is going to get the ball. It is almost as if the defense knows when they get the ball to the offense, good things will happen.

Confidence is a trait winning teams have.

TEXAS A&M: We already knew the Aggies were a good team, but Saturday, we learned just how athletic they are.

Receivers Christian Kirk and Speedy Noil have the ability to get open and make things happen when they get the ball. But they are a doubly-dangerous duo — they return kicks. The stats did not make anyone think of Deion Sanders in his “Primetime” days, but Nevada’s kick teams had to run all over the field to try to pin these two down.

The defense has a true freshman that we learned is going to be a force in the SEC. Daylon Mack is a 6-foot-1, 335-pound fireplug in the middle of the Aggie defense. But he is a fireplug who can run.

Nevada decided to use him as a key on the read option on one play. As the ball was snapped, the center pulled left, leaving Mack alone for the quarterback to read to decide to hand the ball to the tailback or keep it himself. The poor guy had no chance to decide. Mack exploded into the backfield arriving at the quarterback at the same time as the running back. So the freshman did what he thought best — he tackled them both.

He and the rest of the SEC West will be fun to watch the rest of the season.